Fairies seem to love Mt. Pisgah Park. Neighbors have other feelings. The area has been home to art and music festivals for years but locals are upset over the noise that emanates from festivities. (Andrew Seng/Emerald)
For half the year, Mt. Pisgah is a quiet portrait of the Lane County countryside. The rainy months give the park something like a muddy, hermetic seal. Blackberry bushes spread and cattle graze peacefully. Its neighbors are the unassuming farmers, mowing, tilling and generally minding their own business along the brim. It’s when the sun begins to break through the towering trees and the hikers and dog-walkers start clamoring for trails and glades that the park begins to change.
Recently, Emerald Meadows, an 80-acre pocket of space at the base of the mountain, has transformed into a concert venue. Land Watch Lane County, an advisory group representing the farms near the north end of the mountain — some just the length of a football field away — protest that establishing Pisgah as a concert venue not only hurts their ears and tramples all over an area that’s proud of its plant and animal life, but that it’s also illegal.
“State law requires the county to have a public hearing if there are expected to be more than 3,000 people gathering,” said Bob Emmons, the group’s president. “The first [event] this year had a registration of about 6,000 people.”
Faerieworld-goers enter and exit the main gate of the 12th annual celebration of Faerieworlds, a festival which celebrates the spirit of magic, joy, and fantasy worlds. (Andrew Seng/Emerald)
The group’s members also claim the county leapfrogged the farmers’ interests by altering a 2003 land use bill that permits camping in the park, and altering it to allow more people and use for outdoor events. Thus unleashing events such as The Dirty Dash and festivals like the Cascadia Music Festival and last month’s Faerieworlds.
“When that permit was issued it was done without a public hearing,” Emmons said. “Bottom line: there will be a public hearing on these gatherings, and the public needs the opportunity to weigh in.”
Former congressman and Pisgah-area neighbor Jim Weaver agrees.
“This is a tremendous piece of land,” he said. “Untrammeled and five minutes from the University.”
Parks department administrators maintain that they’ve done all the legwork and argue that looking out for parks is in their mission statement.
“We do believe we have all the permits necessary,” said David Stockdale, senior parks analyst for the Lane County Parks Department. “And they’re open to everybody, for whatever they want: family events, big festivals or find quiet places of solitude. Parks for the masses.”
Dwindling budgets for Lane County parks has administrators increasingly exploring methods of funding themselves, and Emerald Meadows has come up big. On paper it’s an obvious decision: capitalize on the growing number of students with disposable income by attracting them to concerts held on a beautiful slice of land. The most recent iteration of Faerieworlds, an outdoor music and art festival, netted the department $100,000. And parks personnel have high hopes for this month’s Kaleidoscope megafestival.
Festival go-ers dance to music at the Faerieworld music festival. (Andrew Seng/Emerald)
“We expect our payment from Kaleidoscope to be anywhere from $30,000 to $75,000 this year,” Stockdale said, “It just depends on where their ticket sales are.” The parks department’s budget is slightly less than $2.5 million, and its funding backbone revolves around hotel room taxes and car rentals. With festivals signing three-year contracts, the department hopes to ride festival revenue to prosperity.
What’s possibly lost on the farming environment is the economic impact these festivals can have. OneEleven Productions, the company behind Kaleidoscope, suggests its festival pads the wallets of all the surrounding businesses and hotels — $1.8 million’s worth all said and done. Festival promoters also point to Coachella Valley, which boomed after its Coachella Music Festival came to national prominence as an example of what a festival can do for the community.
What has spawned on Mt. Pisgah a struggle between old and new. Kaleidoscope, which is more than 100 bands deep, forecasts 10 to 17,000 college-aged people driving through the farmland en route to the fest. Faerieworlds’ headcount was around 7,000 on its busiest day. In June, the Dirty Dash, a mix of a charity fun-run and an obstacle course, congested the narrow roads so badly that people couldn’t get out of their driveway, and traffic allegedly snaked all the way to I-5. The parks department has made efforts to improve the roads and parking areas to ensure the flow of traffic is good, but the past experiences have left many sour.
“I think it may be the right thing for people to gather and have fun,” Emmons said. “But I think this is the wrong place to do it.”