What's the best plan for the Charlottetown Event Grounds? The city's looking into it

CharlottetownMayor Philip Brown said he wants to see changes to the city's event grounds to make them more attractive for festivals.

That comes after Thursday's announcement that the new SunDazeMusic and Art Festival will move to Confederation Landing Park.

"I believe council wants to look at this and really address this issue so that we can utilizethat Charlottetown Event Grounds for all types of events,"Brown said.

Organizers were busy on Friday morning with planning for the festival after they needed tochangevenues before their event at the end of August.

Festival organizer Sam Murphy said Confederation Landingwas their first choice when they contacted the city to relocate the festival toCharlottetown.

'It looks like a packed house'

Murphy said the park was the perfect size and setting for thefestival. The event grounds were not asesthetically pleasing and were consideredtoo big for the event they were putting on.

"If you put three or four thousand people in the event grounds, it looks kind of empty," Murphy said."If you put three or four thousand people in Confederation Landing, it looks like a packed house."

Some downtown residents who live nearby the park are concerned about those three or four thousand festivalgoers.

"When the event is over, that's our biggest concern," said David Brown, the president of the Charlottetown Downtown Resident Association."When they're leaving the event grounds, they have to go through the [residential] areas."

Mayor Brown, who is David's brother,said the government-funded venue wasset up a decade agoto alleviate those concerns.

The whole idea of its creation, he said,was "to take the selling point of Confederation Landing, put it into a bigger venue away from the backyards of neighbourhoods and try to sell it as a place to have festival events," the mayorsaid.

'Underused in their current form'

A report by the provincial government called the event grounds "underused in their current form."

Charlottetown's mayor says that's proven by thefact thatSunDaze festival organizers picked Confederation Landing Park.

"We have to look at how we can remodel it so that you can have the large events and then you can have smaller or medium events," Brown said.

The Charlottetown Event Grounds is owned by theCharlottetown Area Development Corporation and managed by the Eastlink Centre.

The event manager who handles booking for the eventgrounds said that the site could have still been a good fit for the festival.

Event Grounds not consulted

"Nobody approached us.We were surprised as everyone else when we saw it in the media that this even was taking place," said event manager Dave McGrath.

There is still a lot of uncertainty about what the future holds for the event grounds. Holland College hasbeen in talks with government about taking the space over.

The mayor said that even ifthat does happenhe hopes thegrounds are somehow revamped tomake themmore attractive to festivals of all sizes.

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