Plans for a summer music festival in Sylvan Lake appear to be dead for this season after promoters failed to attend a council meeting Monday night.
After being denied use of the pier by the Friends of Sylvan Lake Provincial Park committee, Dana Carlson and Quan Diep, of True Channel Entertainment, attended the May 12 council meeting with a new proposal to use Centennial Park but they were too late to speak during the open mic session and weren’t on the agenda.
Ron Lebsack, the town’s director of community services, said his staff had spoken to the promoters last week and told them they needed to submit a special events application for use of the park.
At Monday night’s council meeting, the Summer X Beach Music Festival was added to the agenda under ‘delegation’ by Mayor Sean McIntyre, but no one attended to address the topic.
In light of that, Lebsack recommended town staff work with the group to see about an event next year. “The timelines are getting extremely tight,” he said.
Several councillors were also concerned that there wasn’t enough time left to organize the Aug. 23 event.
Lebsack said with council’s approval, he’d express staff’s willingness to work with the organizers for an event next year.
“I hope they understand we’re willing to work with them,” said Councillor Jas Payne. “I think there’s an appetite here to have an event like this. The support around this table was clear to them.”
At their April 28 meeting, councillors had conditionally supported the event setting out a number of things that had to be accomplished by specific dates. But since the original plan was for the pier, the ‘Friends’ committee and the provincial government had to approve the event. That didn’t happen.
Information provided to council during the April meeting stated the event would be a “family friendly arts and music festival” that would “encourage tourism, enrich the local economy, enrich local arts and culture”.
They were planning for a maximum of 5,000 attendees between noon and 11 p.m. by providing a “strategic selection of musical artists to appeal to a broad audience”. The main genres would be adult contemporary and alternative rock Ñ easy listening.
The event was to include a public beer garden with a capacity of 400 and a VIP beer garden with a capacity of 300.