THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 22, 1996 TAG: 9609210107
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 13 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BILL REED, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 57 lines
Organizers are re-evaluating the American Music Festival with an eye toward expanding it and possibly making attendance free next year and in following years.
This could mean that fans could walk into Willie Nelson, Hughie Lewis or the Four Tops concerts on the beachfront without paying a dime for admission. This year concert goers paid $10 each to attend most featured performances at the Oceanfront stage at 5th Street.
It could also mean that there might be another surfside stage - other than the one at 5th Street - to accommodate more name acts and more spectators.
Those possibilities are under study now, Henry Richardson, president of the Virginia Beach Hotel and Motel Association, told fellow innkeepers Thursday at a monthly organizational meeting.
Beach Events, the arm of Cellar Door Productions that organizes the annual Labor Day weekend event and books the talent, is looking into the options, said Bill Reid, Cellar Door president.
``It's been so successful that we're trying to organize its growth,'' Reid said Friday. ``Part of that is evaluating a way of accommodating people and with sponsorship - we just don't want to maintain the status quo.''
Richardson, in updating the festival status, said Beach Events is looking into various possible revenue sources to replace admission fees. Some alternatives under study include financing all music festival shows through an existing resort ``events tax,'' which is fed by a special half-cent levy on city hotel room rentals.
This tax generates between $800,000 and $1 million a year and has been spent in the past on general entertainment - music, drama, mimes and clowns - along the Boardwalk.
Another possibility being explored is boosting commercial sponsorships, said Reid. This would be another way of generating more money to pay for the festival tab.
Featured acts at this year's music festival resulted in the advance sale of 1,500 package tickets through about 60 participating hotels, Richardson said. Resort hotels booked a number of rooms over Labor Day weekend through patrons who planned to attend the beachfront concerts.
Innkeepers also learned Thursday that the Holiday Lights at the Beach program that opens for the second year on the Boardwalk in late November will experience a few changes.
One, said Sandy Jackson, who helped organize last year's program, is the addition of seven new glittering displays to the 20 or so that last year adorned the Oceanfront from 8th to 32nd streets. Included, she said, will be an animated, swivel-hipped Elvis display.
Another change, said Jackson, will be the continuation of the light show, with no breaks for Thanksgiving, Christmas or New Year's Day, from Nov. 22 through Jan. 5. Last year the display was blacked out in observance of those holidays.
The production of the Oceanfront light show will depend this year, as it did last year, on the number of volunteers who sign up to help sell tickets and control auto traffic on the Boardwalk during the night-time displays. by CNB