In the desert, a debate over fate of event
Residents fear both virus’ potential spread by fan influx, revenue loss if fest is canceled.
At the Empire Polo Club in Indio, six weeks before the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival is set to kick off, the peaked white tents are going up across the rolling green lawns. The rainbow tinted “Spectra” observation deck looms over the field, ready for fans from around the world to soak in the panoramas as Travis Scott, Rage Against the Machine, Frank Ocean and more than 150 acts perform.
Twenty-five miles away, Barbara Cooper and Steve Widders walked their dog on a hiking path by the Indian Canyons Golf Resort in Palm Springs, and they were growing nervous about the coronavirus possibly coming to their community and how it might affect one of the biggest local tourism events.
“I just came from Sonoma, where they had people quarantined. People aren’t usually held in isolation for something like the flu,” said Cooper, 69, and a Palm Springs local. She worked most of her life as a registered nurse and knows how scary such a disease can be. The novel coronavirus is especially dangerous for older people and those with underlying health conditions. The national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises older people to “stay at home as much as possible,” and in a retirement town where the median age is around 53, that’s a concern. But Palm Springs is also a tourist town that is counting on the revenue from the hundreds of thousands of music fans that pour in from around the world for Coachella. Canceling the country’s preeminent music festival is worrisome in its own right.
“A lot of the local economy depends on tourism here, and it’ll definitely affect restaurants, spas and hotels,” Cooper said.
“I’m not really worried about getting coronavirus, because I’m not going to Coachella,” Widders, 70, said laughing. “But the economics are a big concern.”
As the industry behind the spring and summer music festival season confronts the strain of novel coronavirus causing the disease COVID-19, festival fans are bracing for just about anything. On Sunday, at least 537 coronavirus cases had been confirmed across the U.S., including 114 in California, with 21 deaths nationwide. In just the last week, both the Ultra Music Festival in Miami and the South by Southwest music, film and tech conferences in Austin, Texas, have been called off over virus fears.
Coachella, held over two weekends between April 10 and 19, is proceeding as scheduled. Executives from promoter Goldenvoice or its parent company AEG have not made any announcements regarding cancellation or postponement of the festival, which has been long
sold out — 125,000 fans are expected daily for each of its two weekends.
The authority to shut down the festival rests with Dr. Cameron Kaiser, Riverside County’s health officer. County public health officials said they’re in contact with festival organizers and stand ready to make decisions based on the risks to the public.
“We want to make sure we can do anything to protect the community,” said Kim Saruwatari, director of public health for Riverside County.
South by Southwest’s cancellation by city and county officials may have set a powerful precedent in how such massive music festivals deal with COVID-19.
AEG is not likely to unilaterally cancel the festival. If it calls off Coachella simply out of its own caution, the promoter’s insurance company would not be responsible for reimbursing AEG for its losses.
However, in the event of a county-, city- or statemandated cancellation, a “force majeure” clause (“superior force,” often referred to as the “hand of God”) would be triggered, and insurance would cover AEG’s expenses and lost revenue.
One industry executive familiar with Coachella’s financials said that it nets from $75 million to $100 million in profits annually and that an insurance payout in the event of a force majeure could total between $150 million and $200 million.
Upon cancellation, ticket buyers would receive refunds.
Not everyone is hitting the panic button yet in the industry. One national festival executive who does not work on Coachella, speaking anonymously to be able to comment freely, said that “unless we’re told by the government to shut it down, we’re still moving forward with all our festival plans for the year.”
However, if Coachella does follow the examples set by Ultra and SXSW, the fallout could be significant for the Greater Palm Springs area, where hospitality is a dominant industry.
Around 388,000 people live in the Coachella Valley. Recent studies from the Greater Palm Springs Convention & Visitors Bureau peg tourism as a $7-billion industry in the area, with 1 in every 4 jobs supported by it. Even before its 2017 expansion to 125,000 daily visitors, the Coachella festival brought an estimated $704 million in economic activity to the area in 2016. Indio nets more than $3 million in tax revenue every year from the festival’s ticket sales alone.
At the hipster hot spots of the Coachella Valley, many fear the impact of a canceled festival.
“It would affect Palm Springs big time,” said Tony
Martinez, manager at Bootlegger Tiki, a popular bar just off the main drag of downtown Palm Springs. His bar doesn’t get too much Coachella-specific spillover, he said, so he’s not so worried about those particular two weeks. But if a potential Coachella cancellation sends notice that resorts and large events are unsafe in California, it could be a brutal season for tourism.
“People won’t travel, and we rely on them coming here,” he said.
At the Ace Hotel in Palm Springs, Coachella is a peak time on its calendar. The hip boutique hotel hosts Coachella-timed after-parties and pool parties, and it’s a popular spot for wellheeled guests to stay while attending the festival.
Executive chef Ysaac
Rodriguez was winding down in the hotel’s Amigo Room bar Thursday night. He said that right now, the coronavirus hasn’t scared off many guests at all — “It’s still going strong,” he said, pointing to the tight crowds dancing to disco vinyl in the cavern-like pub by the pool.
But if Coachella were to be canceled, the Ace would feel it immediately.
“We depend on it,” Rodriguez said. “If they cancel, it would be really detrimental.
“I don’t think they will cancel,” he added, striking a note of wait-and-see optimism. “But we want people to be safe too. You have to balance it.”
Just steps from the Empire Polo Club in the Tack Room Tavern, however, Patty Copeland and Carole
Taylor were each visiting family members who were longtime residents in the Coachella Valley. They were worried that the festival would bring COVID-19 too close to their kids or older family members nearby.
“Hell, no, I wouldn’t want them to go,” Copeland said. She came from Minnesota and has two music-fan children in their early 30s. “You can’t go overboard and buy out everything at Costco, but you want to be sensible.”
“Absolutely, I wouldn’t want my daughter going,” Taylor agreed. Her 30-yearold daughter has attended three Coachella festivals and the Stagecoach country music festival that follows a weekend later, but given that they both live in San Francisco, where a cruise ship carrying people who’ve tested positive for the cornonavirus was quarantined off the coast and expected to dock at the port of Oakland sometime Monday, “I don’t even want her going to work right now.”
Thirty-year-old Haley Lightcap knows that balance better than most. On Friday afternoon, she was lounging at the Saguaro Hotel in Palm Springs for a friend’s party. She’s from Austin and for years managed the Eastside Tavern there, which was a popular rental for tech and media firms during South by Southwest (HBO once bought it out for an interactive “Westworld” experience).
She hadn’t been to Coachella before, but she knows firsthand how important major music events are to cities heavily reliant on tourism and what such a cancellation would do to the local economy. That’s even truer for bartenders, hotel staff and others who have little margin in their budgets.
“South by Southwest covered six months of our operating expenses,” she said. “I would make six months’ pay in three weeks.”
She’s not worried about the virus, though. Music fans have always been coming into contact with gross stuff at festivals. She’s lived through worse.
“I got swine flu when that was going around and I was fine,” she joked.
That’s not exactly what a parent wants to hear from their kid as they embark on a festival, though. But fears probably won’t keep many fans away. Barring a cancellation, crowds will still come streaming through the gates as they have done for decades.
But as she looked out over the expanse of lawn, where concession areas and tent stages were beginning to rise, concerned mom Copeland wouldn’t want anyone she loved to take their chances.
“I know my kids are adults, but I’d say please, please don’t go,” she said, the nick of a tear in her eye. “It’ll still be there next year.”