By Elliott Brack, editor and publisher | Virtually unrecognized among the many changes in Gwinnett is the way the cities of the county are now providing popular music venues, usually at no cost to concert-goers. People flock to these concerts, often setting up chairs a day in advance to get a good location.
What got us to thinking about this was the Sugar Hill concert area. During development of the new City Hall, the grading created a natural bowl, as former City Manager Bob Hale remembers. “The design engineers started talking about stair-step terracing. The Council said that since there was a stairstep anyway, why not make the stairsteps higher, also create a stage and end up with an amphitheatre? We doubled the size of the terracing for seating and tables. The flooding of the detention pond only comes up to below the stage level. It creates a beautiful venue now.”
Sugar Hill has five paid concerts, May to September, and another five free concerts a year. It budgets $300,000 for the big-name concerts, but with tickets sales and sponsorships, the net from city funds is roughly $100,000. Attendance varies, but often has 2,500 enjoying the music.
No one has pinpointed when the cities began the free music concerts. But in Duluth, the first concerts on the Town Green were in 2002, as the new City Hall was completed. Now Duluth hosts concerts monthly, May through September, with estimated attendance between 1,500 and 7,500, depending on what music group is playing. The city budgets between $40-$60,000 to pay for the music groups. About half of this amount is offset with sponsorships.
Over in Loganville, Mayor Dan Curry tells us that they have concerts about once a month on the Town Green, with from 900 to 1,200 people attending. The city also funds the groups, from $2,500 to $4,500 a time, though this is also partially offset by sponsorships.
Loganville also funds fireworks once or twice a year, and has city-sponsored movie time on the Town Green from time to time, with good attendance. He says: “People are always looking for something to do, and we like for them to do it here.”
In Snellville, the city pays for four summer concerts, with the $20,000 coming from the Tourism and Trade budget. These concerts are on Snellville’s Towne Green, in front of city hall.
Open air concerts started in Suwanee in 2004. The city now funds nine concerts from spring, Memorial Day, August and five food truck Friday concert plus a tree lighting concerts with school choruses. Altogether the city funds $30,000 for these concerts, which are all free, and with no seating space sold. Attendance varies from 3,000 to 10,000, says Amy Doherty of the city.
Lawrenceville concert
The city of Norcross has concerts in its downtown Thrasher Parks on Fridays Memorial Day through Labor Day, with attendance of between 2,000-4,000 sprawled in blankets on the grass or in chairs. It also has Jazz in the Alley four times (the last in October), but a smaller attendance of about 300. The $52,000 in funding for these concerts comes out of its hotel-motel budget. By providing a portable air-conditioned rest room trailer (instead of Porta-Potties), the city gets rave reviews. Attendees also like having the concerts near the Thrasher Park playground for the children.
Lilburn has three musical concerts a year, in its City Park, budgeting $9,000 in public funds, while perhaps one-third of that costs is covered by sponsorships. The city feels that these concerts are among the most popular events of the year.
Peachtree Corners currently only has a concert on Friday before the city’s Festival the next day in June. The city eventually hopes to schedule more concerts on its Town Green once that area of town is developed.
In the county seat of Lawrenceville, its new Lawrenceville Lawn is the focus of five concerts, plus a Prelude to the Fourth of July at the Historic Courthouse; a Rock and Ribs in September; and a concert during its art festival. The city budgets $70,000 from the hotel motel collections on these concerts, but offsets this with $40,000 in sponsorships.
It’s a competitive world for city concerts in Gwinnett each summer.
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