Fans of Cage the Elephant give lead singer Matt Shultz a helping hand at Pemberton (B.C.) Music Festival. (Photo by Pemberton Music Festival)
Typically when big music festivals go away after their debut, it’s curtains. But after a six-year hiatus, Pemberton Music Festival, which ran July 16-20, recently rebooted with a new promoter, new attractions and a whole new attitude.
The event at the base of Mt. Currie in Pemberton, British Columbia, drew more than 75,000 campers and commuters in the picturesque setting that played host to close to 100 acts, including: Nine Inch Nails, Outkast, Deadmau5, Soundgarden, Frank Ocean, Kendrick Lamar, Metric, Snoop Dogg and Blondie.
After a one-and-done event promoted by Live Nation in 2008, Pemberton got a revival thanks to privately-held New Orleans-based promoter Huka Entertainment in cooperation with the Village of Pemberton and land partners from the Sunstone Group and the Lil'wat Nation.
“Six years ago I was up in the Pacific Northwest looking for a festival site for a band that wanted to do a festival in Washington State, but we had difficulties finalizing an agreement,” said Huka CEO A.J. Niland. That deal fell through, but he coincidentally got a call from a friend who said there was a property in Pemberton he might be interested in on the same weekend he’d been scouting. “I got on a plane and looked at the site and fell in love. I wasn’t even aware of the 2008 event until the day after when I was meeting with the landowners.”
He quickly realized that the Pemberton site perfectly fit Huka’s style: find a resort community and build a festival around it (much like Niland had helped do in Gulf Shores, Ala., with the popular Hangout Festival). The trick was to avoid some of the pitfalls that he said befell the 2008 event, which included traffic backups, waste removal issues, poor ground maintenance and a lack of community support.
Though the area boasts one of the largest ski resorts in North America in Whistler (with Pemberton just 19 miles away), the road to Pemberton narrows to just two lanes at spots. Niland’s plan to combat the traffic issues of 2008 included several steps: limiting camping and having the balance of the 25,000 attendees take shuttle buses from Whistler. His team also increased the site’s capacity by 150 acres to 350 total, which avoided the awkward earlier scenario where campers had to leave the main highway a mile shy of the site, then board buses that put them back on that same highway to be transported to the festival.
In addition, his team built a temporary bridge across the highway to aid ingress and egress, added four lanes to the site entrance and opened camping up one day early to manage flow.
“I’d say the budget was well high in the eight figures, north of $10 million,” he said. “This was our first camping festival, which is a whole other experience we’ve not seen before … it was the first property we’ve worked on that was not a public beach or event facility.” That meant dealing with landscaping and installing permanent irrigation, something Huka had never had to think about before.
Hence, the two-year planning process included a scheme to combat the dust that billowed at the earlier event by bringing in Steve LeGros (aka “The Grass Whisperer”). The sports field consultant established a program of regular maintenance in the fall of 2013. “We treated it like our own private park, we mowed it regularly and watered it,” said Niland.
And, with reports of Porta-Potties that were overflowing and insufficient trash pick-up in 2008, Niland said he hired Clean Vibes to do nightly trash pickup and keep the site orderly. Live Nation declined to comment for this story.
Tyler the Creator was one of nearly 100 artists who performed at Pemberton Music Festival. (Photo by Pemberton Music Festival)
Huka also integrated a few other elements that made Pemberton unique. One was a robust stand-up comedy presence and dedicated, designed comedy space. “A lot of feedback we’ve gotten from agents and comedians is that festivals are not the most conducive comedy spaces,” he said. “So we had to create a venue that would be intimate and conducive to comedy and fit the festival vibe.”
In addition, there was a 500-foot zipline ($5 per ride or $20 unlimited) and a free waterslide, attractions he said were intended to enhance the festival experience, introduce some novelty. “There was a bit of an increase in insurance for [those items] but it wasn’t terribly bad and we partnered with really strong operators,” he said of the added cost of hosting those diversions.
“We started with the site, a place you would love to be whether there was a festival or not,” Niland said of the philosophy for building out Pemberton. “Once you find that location you’re checking off a big box on the experience side and then you try to emphasize what you’re trying to create, which is a festival with an outdoor adventure side of things. All this plays into the theme and pushes the experience to the next level.”
After putting in significant infrastructure and capital expenses, Niland said he “absolutely” plans to return and hopes to reach profitability by year three.
The door is definitely open, according to Daniel Sailland, chief administrative officer of the Village of Pemberton, who will be stepping down from the position at the end of the summer.
“Things were absolutely ironed out this time,” he said of the job Huka did to address the previous issues. “In this case I think they really did a phenomenal job of not only addressing those issues of big concern, but also putting their brand on how they put together a site and run an operation. All in all we were quite pleased.”
Sailland said Huka knocked concerns about waste removal “out of the park” and that local residents were pleasantly surprised at how easily traffic flowed and the lack of highway closures. He said even the little things — like hot and cold running water and mirrors outside of washrooms — showed an attention to small detail while also getting the big picture items done efficiently.
The one concern local businesses had going in was what opportunities they would have as a result of the influx of 25,000 attendees over the long weekend. “Huka had a ‘How to Thrive and Survive’ session in town through the chamber of commerce and it opened up the door for a lot of businesses to get a good idea of who to talk to and what the process was,” he said.
Though the city is not a financial partner in the fest, it did work with local landowners and stakeholders to smooth approvals on the land and ensure that the event would be economically beneficial for the provincial economy. Sailland wasn’t sure of the final financial economic impact at press time, but said the festival brought in $18 million in investment in Pemberton and the periphery. “It really opened the door to a lot of positive gain,” he said.
Interviewed for this story: A.J. Niland, (504) 684-5557; Daniel Sailland, (604) 894-6135