Organizer Makes Offer For Expanded ACL Fest
ACL Fest could expand to two weekends if a deal with city officials goes through. Photo by KUT News.The Austin City Limits Music Festival is in talks with city officials to expand the event to cover two weekends.
The festival has become so popular that three-day-passes routinely sell out well before the lineups are even announced. Because of an attendance cap, the only way to grow the event is to add more days. Organizer C3 Presents wants the city to green-light two weekends in Zilker Park beginning in October 2013. In addition to the fees for the use of Zilker, C3 is promising an unspecified sum of money — said to be in the millions — to upgrade Auditorium Shores, a site not used by ACL Fest, but in demand much of the year.
“The idea of making improvements to Auditorium Shores is a separate discussion,” Austin Parks Director Sarah Hensley said. “They’re not related per se — it’s not like, ‘If I don’t get this, I’m not doing this.’”
But Hensley says tight budgets make the C3 offer especially attractive.
“We need to severely go through, scrape that area, put in new irrigation, and then look at a hybrid grass or turf that is more stable—more sturdy—for foot traffic,” Hensley said. “We need to look at placement of restroom facilities and we need to look at how we establish that lawn so that the general public has a better place to play and have fun. So, yeah — there’s a lot of things.”
Hensley says she expects the City Council to take up a resolution on the expansion of ACL and the Auditorium Shores donation next Thursday.
