With Coachella already sold out and FYF still an entire summer away, we thought we’d turn our attention to an equally massive music festival proposed to take place in Pasadena as early as this year.
The Arroyo Seco Music and Arts Festival would take over the Rose Bowl, and the surrounding area, for three days each June. Almost 90,000 daily attendees would flock to the area for four music stages, a theater performance stage, art displays and a carnival ride or two. The first year of the fest—which would only be a few months away if it’s green-lit for 2016—would take place over two days, with a reduced capacity of 75,000 attendees per day.
Update: The Pasadena City Council approved the plans in April 2016, including the proposed displacement event cap increase to 15. The festival is expected to debut in June 2017.
Anschutz Entertainment Group, whose Goldenvoice subsidiary produces Coachella, is looking to partner with the Rose Bowl Operating Company to stage the fest for at least 10 years. Don’t expect a closer-to-home Coachella, though; an earlier report suggests the fest will be more like AEG’s New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, which skews a little bit older and not quite so EDM-heavy.
Though there’s no word yet about what the lineup would look like, we do have a pretty complete picture of the fest’s logistics thanks to the draft Environmental Impact Report, which was quietly released in December. After a period of public comment that’s open until February 19, the final EIR will be submitted to the Pasadena City Council for the fest’s ultimate approval.
Photograph: Courtesy AEG
After digging through the EIR, the logistics behind the festival sound unsurprisingly similar to the rest of the major events held at the 94-year-old stadium. The length and scope of the event, of course, are the major difference. The three days of performances (running from roughly noon to 11pm each day) would require a two-week setup and one-week breakdown period, during which nearby residents would be subjected to construction noise about as loud as a dishwasher.
Additionally, the festival would need to use part of the adjacent Brookside Golf Club (which serves as a parking lot during large-scale events) for three music stages and back-of-house equipment. If Coachella can take place at a polo club, then sure, the Arroyo Seco Music and Arts Festival can tee off on a golf course. Only the main stage would be housed within the Rose Bowl itself, though in future years that could be moved to the grassy field or parking lot just south of the stadium.
The mostly local audience would overwhelmingly arrive by car, with at least 10% expected to Uber their way there. That should snarl up streets like Arroyo, Orange Grove and Fair Oaks with the usual Rose Bowl delays (i.e. a complete traffic failure leading to the 110 entrance and exit ramps at Fair Oaks). While an 89,600-person capacity puts the fest well above the 60,000 that show up for sold-out summer tours, that’s perfectly in line with the 90,000-plus stadium capacity during football games. Of course, the Bruins don’t typically attract those types of crowds over three consecutive days.
On-site parking would be limited to 16,444 spots, likely reserved for VIP ticketholders and a Carpoolchella-like rideshare program. The rest of the projected 14,000 or so cars would be directed to five off-site parking locations with free shuttles: Parsons Corporation in Old Town (a familiar spot for anyone who’s used the Rose Bowl shuttle before), Pasadena City College, PCC’s east campus, Santa Anita Park and USC.
While residents have every right to worry about traffic as well as air, light and noise pollution, the EIR frames all of those issues as being unavoidable and within all legal limits (if there are any at all). As many construction vehicles and shuttles as possible would use diesel or CNG, flood lights on the parking lot would only shine downward, strobe lights would be kept to tents, lasers wouldn’t shine into houses, side streets would be closed to everyone but residents and the headliner would be over by 11pm. Using sound levels measured at Coachella 2014, estimates put worst-case noise levels for nearby residents somewhere in line with being on the opposite side of the room as a vacuum cleaner—which pushes just up against the residential area’s acceptable noise limits. Those noise limits were supposedly a point of contention during last year's Air + Style fest, so we'll hope that AEG is able to find a solution that satisfies both concertgoers and residents.
The city currently only allows 12 “displacement events”—ones with an attendance greater than 20,000, including college football games—to take place at the Rose Bowl. Pasadena has temporarily increased that cap in the past—there were 18 events allowed in 2014—but festival organizers are urging the city to permanently raise that number to 15 to accommodate the three-day festival. An alternative proposal in the EIR suggests that the festival could just take place with the existing limit of 12, but once you subtract the seven UCLA games and two potential playoff games, the Arroyo Seco Music and Arts Festival would be the only summer concert at the Rose Bowl, which we can’t see happening.