Music festival might have to relocate over site dispute
Osheaga isn't going anywhere, at least not if Nick Farkas has any say in the matter. But the festival — which has become one of the defining events of Montreal's summer — may be forced to uproot come 2023 if a compromise can't be reached with the city.
At the heart of the impasse is the amount of space that Osheaga promoter Evenko has access to at Parc Jean-drapeau, on Île Stehélène. The Plaine des Jeux, a tree-lined field that is home to two of Osheaga's six stages — the Valley Stage and the Green Stage, with a combined capacity of 15,000 to 20,000 people — will no longer be available beginning in 2023.
Even with the addition of the 7,000-capacity Place des Nations, which can be used as of 2024, Osheaga is looking at a 25 per cent reduction in capacity, according to Evenko, which also holds the Îlesoniq and Lasso festivals at the site.
On Wednesday, Mayor Valérie Plante revealed a $970-million redevelopment plan for Parc Jean-drapeau, and Osheaga was not mentioned.
“It's super discouraging,” said Farkas, Evenko's senior vice-president of booking, concerts and events. “It's unbelievable in my mind that we're having this conversation. We're not threatening to leave. We're concerned that with a $1-billion plan, there's no place for us. They're not giving us the support to operate in the same way we have always operated. It's incredibly difficult to understand.”
The standoff has been foreshadowed since at least 2018, when the Société du Parc Jean-drapeau began drawing up a 10-year plan for Île Ste-hélène and Île Notre-dame, which included a yearlong consultation of 6,000 people overseen by the Office de consultation publique de Montréal.
Under former mayor Denis Coderre, the capacity of the park's main amphitheatre (where Osheaga's two main stages are located) was increased from 45,000 to 65,000 at a cost of $70 million. The project required the razing of 1,000 mature trees.
Osheaga's 14th edition drew 130,000 people over three days in 2019. The festival provides an annual economic boost of nearly $20 million to Montreal.
Robert Beaudry, the member of Plante's executive committee responsible for large parks, says the city wants to find a balance between investing in the city's big events and investing in nature, and that a lot of public money has already gone into making Parc Jean-drapeau a welcoming venue for concerts.
“There's a before and an after Coderre,” he said. “We're putting $1 billion towards Parc Jean-drapeau, to regenerate its biodiversity and reclaim a balance that is wanted by the Montreal population.”
The Plaine des Jeux is a patrimonial site with a unique and delicate variety of plants and trees that is adversely affected by events like Osheaga, he explained.
“Each year when the festival is over, the grounds are all muddy. The rest of the year, they're not usable. We want to intervene to help the forest regenerate and make it accessible year-round to all Montrealers, by concentrating events where they should be, on more mineral sites.”
The city is merely following the guidelines of the 200-page report, argued Beaudry, who says Evenko has been consulted throughout the process and that the promoter has been offered four alternative setups.
“Evenko has been very closed,” he said. “We're open and looking for solutions in ways that are coherent with the report.”
Farkas doesn't feel Evenko has been shown a viable alternative arrangement that would allow Osheaga to maintain six stages and its current capacity.
“We've been in constant dialogue with (the city),” he said. “The discussions never stopped. Then the plan comes out and we're not included. It's disheartening.”
Evenko would love to keep Osheaga at Parc Jean-drapeau, according to Farkas, but the circumstances have forced his team to consider moving the event outside Montreal.
“Have we looked at other options? Yeah,” he said. “Do we want to move? No. The best location for Osheaga is Parc Jean-drapeau.”