ROARING FORK BROADCASTING COMPANY
Belly Up Concerts LLC is limiting its proposed two-weekend summer music series to one weekend festival in August 2025 in response to public concerns over scheduling and impact.
A letter of outcry from local arts and culture organizations prompted Pitkin County commissioners to revisit a Sept. 25 informal approval for Belly Up to host two weekends of summer music at the base of Buttermilk between mid-July and mid-August with maximum ticket sales of 16,000 people per day.
Commissioner Steve Child brought the topic back to the Board of County Commissioners at their Wednesday meeting, saying he’s thought twice about his contribution to the unanimous approval.
“Almost immediately, when I got home even that night, I started having second thoughts about 16,000 people being at a concert,” he said. “I was also uneasy about not knowing what days that this would be on. Then almost immediately, we started hearing from several different individuals who contacted me with the same concern.”
Michael Goldberg, owner of Belly Up, said the outcry was a surprise to him after a 5-0 initial approval, their own outreach efforts and the pared-down ticket maximum compared to peak Winter X Games. Still, he offered to move through the permitting process with one instead of two weekends of concerts planned for 2025.
“We had intended to go for two concerts,” he said. “I don’t have any problem with saying we’ll stay with one concert … next year. We’ll stay with a request for that weekend for next year, even though that impacts us from a financial point of view in terms of the economies of scale.”
Goldberg, who attended the meeting with his sons David and Danny, said they will seek a special-use permit for an Aug. 8, 9 and 10 festival event.
The board spent over an hour accepting public comments from concerned parties and the applicants but ultimately voted not to formally reconsider the approval.
Leaders in the local nonprofit arts community echoed concerns about schedule conflicts brought about by a lack of public input during the initial approval. Cristal Logan, vice president and director of Aspen Community Programs at the Aspen Institute, said the arts community coordinates schedules to accommodate audience schedules.
“I’m confident that we can work through this with Michael Goldberg; he obviously cares about this community,” said Logan, also the elected representative for nonprofits on the Aspen Chamber Resort Association board. “But in the future, if there was an outside organization that wanted to do something like this and went through the process, they may not care if they’re cannibalizing local events.”
Austin Stewart, vice president for advancement at the Aspen Music Festival and School, criticized the board’s handling of the application.
“As a newcomer to the community, I would say that I’m a little disappointed in where we are with this process and that administrative-wise, BOCC-wise,” he said, “we’re not really in a great place with for-profit and not-for-profit collaboration, because of some pretty radical oversight, I think, in how this was administered.”
Commissioner Patti Clapper noted that Pitkin County is not majorly involved in arts and culture, as restricted by voters with the Healthy Community Fund and the monies it allocates to local nonprofits.
For Jazz Aspen Snowmass, the scheduling concern is compounded by concerns over similar programming. Jim Horowitz, JAS founder, president and CEO, said about 70% of attendees to their biggest festival, JAS Labor Day Experience, visit from out of town.
“We do think that now we understand that, unfortunately, both Belly Up and JAS are identifying similar artists for our next festival,” Horowitz said. “So we are now definitely concerned that we are competing. We’re going to have to compete. We don’t want to compete, we want to get along. But [the festival], especially in August, is a pretty threatening and dangerous and scary thing.”
A not-for-profit, JAS has organization members. Horowitz said after the meeting that he’s heard from members about the prospect of another major summer music festival.
Commissioners Kelly McNicholas Kury and Greg Poschman voted to reconsider the application at the BOCC’s Oct. 23 meeting. Commissioners Francie Jacober, Steve Child and Clapper voted not to schedule a reconsideration. Child, Jacober and McNicholas Kury all said they would be unlikely to change their vote of approval.
After the discussion, Horowitz said he was unhappy with the date chosen for the Belly Up event, calling it “impossible” to have two similar, large music festivals in the Roaring Fork Valley so close together.
“If they sound even remotely alike, I don't think it’s a great idea,” he said.
Commissioners Greg Poschman and Francie Jacober apologized for not adequately considering the impact of the proposed event at their Sept. 25 meeting, and Jacober admitted to not having read the application packet as closely as she should have — missing the 16,000-person detail.
The county has approved special-event permits for functions larger than the 16,000-person-per-day proposed festival, particularly pre-pandemic iterations of Winter X Games. The board, however, directed staff to return with a presentation on how to make special-event permit processes more public and less administrative for similarly sized events.
The application is subject to final approval from both the community development department and the Pitkin County Sheriff's Office, plus “progress report” type check-ins between the applicant and the board.