SF to Host Up to 3 New Huge GG Park Concerts in 2024
Plan for Concerts in Golden Gate Park and Downtown Plazas Approved
New agreement will bring concert series to San Francisco annually for three years as part of the City’s economic revitalization efforts
Today the City’s plans for a series of ticketed concerts in Golden Gate Park following Outside Lands Festival and three Downtown locations beginning next year was approved by the Board of Supervisors. The concert series are projected to provide key economic benefits for San Francisco, while helping contribute to the prevention of cuts to City parks and programming.
Under the approved agreement, Another Planet Entertainment (APE) will hold two to three ticketed (i.e. paid) concerts in Golden Gate Park’s Polo Fields in August the weekend after the Outside Lands Festival for three years beginning in 2024. And as part of the agreement, concert producers will fund free Muni rides to and from the Polo Field for concert ticket holders.
Essentially it will be like part of Outside Lands gets extended an extra week, but just the main Polo Fields stage – using the same staging and festival infrastructure, but with one main “headliner” and support acts.
In addition to the concerts in Golden Gate Park, APE will also produce complimentary concerts at Civic Center Plaza, Union Square and Embarcadero annually, also for three years.
The agreement also increases Community Benefit Funding for neighborhood-specific projects and programs in the Sunset and Richmond District. APE, which produces the annual Outside Lands Festival, currently provides $25,000 annually to both District 1 and District 4. The agreement will increase these community funds by $10,000 per neighborhood.
The new summer concerts in the Polo Fields will have a footprint about a third the size of the Outside Lands Festival, and will accommodate smaller, headliner-focused events that will use a portion of Outside Lands’ existing infrastructure to minimize impact on the park.
The City’s permit fees, $1.4 million for a two-day event and $2.1 million for a three-day event, will allow the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department to continue to offer programming to children, adults, and seniors across San Francisco, and care for its facilities.
While 75,000 people per day attend the three-day Outside Lands, crowds at the additional concerts would be capped at 65,000 per day under the proposed agreement.
Transforming Downtown into a leading arts, culture, and nightlife destination is one of the strategies of Mayor Breed’s Roadmap to Downtown San Francisco’s Future plan, which aims to transform Downtown into a stronger, resilient, economic and global destination. Together, the concerts are expected to create hundreds of jobs.
The agreement requires APE to maintain the same measures to lessen noise and traffic impacts as with Outside Lands, including a community hotline for neighbors, SFMTA officers directing traffic and enforcing parking laws in the neighborhood, offering shuttles to and from the event, and a dedicated area for rideshare drop-off and pick-up. APE has partnered with the City for 15 years on Outside Lands. The festival has injected over a billion dollars into San Francisco’s economy since its inception.
