The extra weekend of shows in Golden Gate Park from the promoter of Outside Lands, starting next year, had faced opposition from the Supervisors Connie Chan and Joel Engardio, but Another Planet Entertainment has hammered out a deal that’s changed both of their minds.
Word broke in May that Outside Lands promoter Another Planet Entertainment (APE) was mulling a second weekend of live shows starting in 2024, which would be two or three days of "headliner-driven" concerts the weekend after Outside Lands, with a smaller footprint in the Polo Field area. But many residents of the adjacent Sunset and Richmond Districts were none too thrilled with the prospect of an extra weekend of ruckus, and those districts' supervisors Connie Chan and Joel Engardio both came out against the idea.
The fun police are back in action....first the Ferris wheel, now Outside Lands.
— Mark Dietrich (@markdietrichsf) July 17, 2023
More events bring $$$ to our local economy: restaurants, hotels, parking fundraisers at schools….as well as $$$ to city hall. These events build civic pride and help revitalize our struggling… pic.twitter.com/9K62lH9YeW
But APE went back to the drawing board, and sweetened the deal in a Thursday community meeting so that both supervisors are now on board. The Examiner reports that Chan and Engardio have reached an agreement with APE and now both supervisors support the second weekend of shows. That clears a major hurdle for APE, though the matter still faces a full Board of Supervisors vote.
“With this initial agreement, Rec and Park has committed to continuing the outreach to our community, to ensure their concerns are heard, while still bringing the benefits to the Richmond and the entire city,” Chan said in a release provided to SFist. “I appreciate Another Planet Entertainment’s willingness to come to the table and recognize the communities I represent. Our conversations have led to prioritize community input in this process, to ensure prevailing wage for all workers, and to concrete initiatives for downtown revitalization.”
Unsurprisingly, money helped strike this deal. APE agreed to increase their donations to Richmond and Sunset Community Benefit Funding from $25,000 to $35,000 for both districts. Rec and Parks will bank at least $1.4 million in permit fees if it’s a two-day event, and $2.1 million if it’s a three-day event. The deal proposes three years of these concerts, with additional free downtown concerts in those same years at Civic Center Plaza, Union Square, and the Embarcadero. APE says that ticket holders will get free Muni rides, though it’s currently unclear how that would work.
And reading between the lines of Engario’s statement, it seems APE is definitely using this to improve their image for public and regulatory approval of their controversial Castro Theatre renovations.
“San Francisco is lucky to have Another Planet Entertainment, an independent and locally owned concert production company,” Engardio said in his statement. “They’re going to make the iconic Castro theater viable and relevant again so future generations can make new memories in a magnificent old building. And now they’re going to bring free concerts downtown to help revitalize the core of our city.”
Though as KGO reports, there is still plenty of opposition among Richmond and Sunset residents. "I'm totally against this," resident Cora Joseph said at Thursday’s meeting, according to the station. "It's the noise, it's the traffic, it's the trash, it's the people peeing on my garage door. You don't need to do this."
And again, this is not a done deal. According to the release fro Rec and Parks, “The Board of Supervisors Budget Committee will hear the matter September 6, 2023. If it passes, it is expected to go before the full board for final approval September 12, 2023.”
This year’s 15th anniversary Outside Lands, which is in three weeks, is unaffected by any of this. As a reminder, your Friday headliners this year are Kendrick Lamar and Janelle Monae, Saturday’s are Foo Fighters and Lana Del Rey, with Sunday offering Odesza and Megan Thee Stallion. Single-day general admission and VIP tickets are still available, though the three-day packages are sold out.
Photo: Courtesy of Alive Coverage via Grandstand Medi