City Officials Explain Why Bands Were Canceled

City Manager Charles Theofan and City Council members further explained the city’s decision to cancel the festival part of the Quiksilver Pro New York surf competition.

They did so during Tuesday’s meeting at City Hall when residents did everything from compliment the city’s cleanup efforts in the wake of Hurricane Irene to criticize city officials for not properly informing the public about the event, its scale and relative issues, such as parking.

“In the context of having just had a hurricane, I don’t feel that we needed Woodstock descending on this town,” City Council President Thomas Sofield Jr. told one resident who criticized the city for canceling the festival that was to feature music, skateboarding and motocross events on the Superblock and Foundation Block.

Sofield indicated that he was concerned about the scale of the event, described in Quiksilver’s words as the world’s largest actions sports and music festival ever assembled, after a storm that left many homes flooded, powerless and otherwise damaged.  

“I understand that you and a lot of people may disagree with my decision, but you can’t question my motivation,” Sofield said. “My motivation was to do what I thought, under the circumstances, was the best for the protection of this entire community.”  

Resident Fran Adelson, a Democrat running for City Council in November, thought the residents have right to know about certain decisions the city made about the event. “How was the decision made to bring the festival in the first place, and how was the decision made to cancel the music portion,” she asked.

Theofan said that he made the decision to bring the festival after Councilman John McLaughlin travelled to Quiksilver’s West Coast headquarters, and after he and his staff attended numerous meetings with the surf company.

“If you think for one minute that the decision to cancel was taken lightly, it was not,” the city said. “It was a very painful decision because of all the work that had gone into it.”

Theofan added that Quiksilver did not argue when he told them his decision to cancel the festival.  

Mike Matey, Quiksilver’s vice president of marketing, who attended part of Tuesday’s meeting, told Patch on Wednesday when asked about the bilateral decision: “We obviously worked with the city and went on their lead because, at the end of the day, it’s the city’s decision on whether or not to hold that festival.”

Theofan on Tuesday, reiterating his reasons for canceling the festival that he included in an open letter to the community last week, said his decision was based on the damage the hurricane wreaked in the city, leaving thousands without power. Some residents told Theofan that they still didn’t understand why their loss of power prevented the festival from continuing, even if in a scaled-down form.

Theofan said that when he called Quiksilver to cancel the festival, he asked whether parts of it could be salvaged, but was told that it could not.  

“There is a lot of money involved here, and there are insurance policies involved,” Theofan explained. “They couldn’t just do part of it. It was all or nothing.”

* The second part of this two-part story is here.