East Hampton Town Board Mulls Over Pop-Rock Festival

A two-day pop-rock festival in mid-August at  that could attract nearly 10,000 music fans to listen to the likes of Paul Simon, Paul McCartney, and Bon Jovi will need a mass gathering permit from the East Hampton Town Board first. A few board members asked for some more specifics at its meeting on Tuesday before voting on whether to grant the permit on Thursday.

"MTK: Music to Know, Summer Music Festival 2011," could attract as many as 9,500 visitors over two days, according to the permit application filed recently with the town. The festival would be held at the 26-acre Principi farm, off Montauk Highway in Amagansett, where Ladles of Love, a benefit for local food pantries, was held last August.

It is unlikely that that many fans would attend at one time, the organizers took pains to say during a presentation for the town board at the . Bill Collage and Christopher Jones, both of Sag Harbor, as well as John Kowalenko, who organized the Ladles benefit, are spearheading this summer's effort. Collage, who is a screenwriter, and Jones, who owns the , presented some details of what they envision, also noting that they hope to have a permit by month's end so that they can book entertainers before they make other commitments.

The festival would be held on Aug. 12 and 13, with the gates opening at 11 a.m., the music starting at noon and ending at 10 p.m., Collage said in a phone interview on Tuesday evening. Paul Simon, Billy Joel, Paul McCartney, Chad Smith, and Bon Jovi are some talent, who happen to live locally, that they hope to tap, meanwhile filling out the roster with "new and emerging bands," Collage told the board.

Answering a question from Supervisor Bill Wilkinson, Kowalenko said from the audience that almost 2,000 people, including workers, attended the Ladles event, which took place over one day. 

There would be two stages set up, with performances "ping-ponging" between them, as Collage put it, as well as a beer garden, wine terrace, VIP tent, catering tents, children's activities, fashion shows, and vendors' booths selling retail products as well as food and beverages. Music fans would buy a single ticket allowing them to attend whichever concerts they liked, whenever they liked, over the weekend.

Jones said by phone that he could see people leaving to go to the beach, for instance, then returning to the "overall lifestyle experience." Their hope is it will evolve into much more: a tv show, a record label, perhaps, Collage said, or a "turnkey solution for anyone who wants to do events."

Jones told the town board that they would commit to giving "hard dollar donations" -- in the tens of thousands -- to charity, which at least one town board member, Dominick Stanzione, said later that he was pleased to hear. Food pantries, the Surfrider Foundation, the Amagansett Life-Saving Station, and dredging Montauk Inlet were some causes they said they had in mind.

Kowalenko and Jones also said the festival would provide prime exposure for all the charities involved, Kowalenko saying that the Ladles concert had carried "a lot of leg" for food pantries that had tables there.

"It's kind of a Trojan horse," Jones said of the festival, meaning that it could lead to media exposure and career prospects, among numerous other benefits for the community and its causes.

Locals would get a "discount window," perhaps by buying pre-sale tickets, Collage said by phone. Only about 5 percent of the tickets would be at the VIP level, Jones and Collage both said.

They stressed the potential for the event to bring jobs -- including long-term ones and ones in the arts. They could range "putting up fences to rigging the lights to grilling hot dogs to food and beverage service," from "front of stage to back stage, electricians, retail, then all the stuff involved with music itself," Collage said later. For "months and months in advance, all the logistical stuff," could supply other opportunities to work, he said. He told the town board about 750 people would be hired.

Theresa Quigley, another town board member, expressed particular interest in the potential to hire local people, particularly in media-related jobs. She is the liason to the media committee.

Hy Brodsky, a member of the audience who was, he said, responsible for the Montauk Jazz Festival, asked why the festival shouldn't be held "on Sept. 13," thereby extending the season.

Collage said the concert would primarily attract visitors from age 18 to 30, who would have returned to college by then, as would have out-of-town parents of children who were back in school.

The notion of that demographic raised the eyebrows of Pete Hammerle, another town board member, who suggested that people that age, particularly those taking the train out, might be more inclined to sleep on the beach than in a hotel room, particularly when all the rooms were booked.

Collage said that the population was "engorged" in August anyway, and that the hope was that the event would draw people already in share houses, hotels, and summer houses.

Julia Prince, another board member, said that 9,500 was "a few more people" than had attended Ladles of Love, to which Jones pointed out that 50,000 had attended the Hampton Classic Horse Show in Bridgehampton, 25,000 of them on Grand Prix Sunday. Collage added that the Newport Jazz Festival brings about 50,000 people to a 20-acre site.

Wilkinson said the first lighting of the Montauk Lighthouse three years ago had attracted 5,000 people, and that, although traffic was backed up on Montauk Highway to West Lake Drive, "every restaurant was booked."

Prince, most particularly concerned, it seemed, about traffic and the potential for New York-based union workers to secure any professional jobs that might have gone to locals, said that she would like to have a conversation with the applicants before moving ahead, a sentiment echoed by Stanzione, who wanted further details about precisely how much would be committed to charity.

Hammerle agreed, suggesting that if the board voted, as Wilkinson seemed inclined to do, at its meeting on Thursday, the public would only then be getting a first glimpse of the application in the newspapers.

He asked the applicants to put the word out ahead of time that those who attend cannot simply take the train out and camp on the beach. "You'll fail miserably," he warned them, "if we fail miserably."