Art festival in the works for Astrodome
County still must sign off on 2018 event however
Preservationists have raised thousands of dollars as part of a crowdfunding campaign to hold an art festival in the Astrodome — but Harris County officials say they haven’t signed off on the event.
As of Friday afternoon, the campaign has raised more than $2,500 out of a $15,000 goal to help pay for a festival that would feature “innovative public art, exciting sports activities, and one of the Dome’s great strengths — live music,” according to the crowdfunding web site.
The campaign is being run by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Heineken USA and the Astrodome Conservancy. The news was first reported by the Swamplot blog Thursday.
Beth Wiedower, senior field officer and director of the Houston field office of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, said they would not yet be releasing details about the festival, but they planned to hold it in early 2018, before Harris County is slated to begin construction on a $105 million project to re-purpose the stadium by raising the floor and creating 1,400 parking spaces underneath.
The event, Wiedower said, would be like the Dome’s 50th birthday celebration in 2015, when 25,000 Houston residents lined up to tour the stadium. No public events have been held there since.
But Joe Stinebaker, spokesman for Harris County Judge Ed Emmett, said he does not know if the festival is going to happen. Harris County owns the Astrodome, and is in the middle of a massive renovation project, which itself is facing political hurdles.
“I’m not sure if we can accommodate this project,” Stinebaker said.
He said while the county has been in talks with the conservancy about potential projects in the Astrodome, the county “wasn’t aware of this specific project.”
“We have an active and ongoing reconstruction going on, and our hope is that in 2018, we’re raising that floor and putting in the parking spaces below,” he said. “If we can accommodate this event, we will, but at this point there are just entirely too may unknowns for us to be able to commit to it happening.”
Architects and engineers are working on the first phase of the project, likely to be complete some time next year. Then, county commissioners have to give another green light for construction.
And that project may be stymied after a state lawmaker filed a bill that, if passed, would put the project up for a countywide referendum.
Still, Stinebaker said the art festival idea is “emblematic of the fact that there is a great deal of interest out there in people wanting to hold events in the Astrodome.”
If they were to hold a festival in the Dome, the county would need to get permission from the city of Houston fire marshal’s office, which has declared the stadium unfit for occupancy.