Alcohol Vendor Chosen For Music Under The Stars
Clarification: Patrons can buy two alcoholic drinks at a time at the vendor at the concert, not just two drinks for the whole concert.
Summer’s Music Under The Stars concert series at the Chamizal National Park is set to start back up on Sunday with a new policy on alcohol.
Beer and wine will be sold for $3 per 16-ounce cup with a limit of two cups per person (at each time).
In the past people were allowed to bring their own alcoholic beverages to the Sunday concerts, but park officials placed a ban on alcohol last summer because they said they were seeing too many instances of people passing out and drunkenly fighting.
The ban on booze led to a dramatic drop in attendance from a season average of about 110,000 to 39,000. The City’s Museums and Cultural Affairs Department received feedback from the public that people were not attending because of the alcohol ban.and led officials to reconsider that decision.
Concert-goers will now be allowed to purchase beer or wine from a vendor. Park officials said about four local applicants submitted proposals to be the exclusive alcohol vendor for Music Under The Stars. Central El Paso’s Coconuts Bar and Grill won the two-year deal.
“They have to pay an administrative fee, which is about $200,” said park superintendent Catherine Light. She explained the vendor gets to keep all the profits from the alcohol sales without giving the park nor the city a cut.
Light said Coconuts won the deal because they offered the cheapest priced beer and wine, were willing to bring staff of their own for crowd control and vowed to pitch in during post-concert cleanup.
Light said her office was still in the process of finalizing how the new alcohol policy will be enforced. She said the idea of having plastic cups and wristbands had been brought up, but not confirmed.
It is also unknown at this time what kind of security measures park officials will implement when admitting concert-goers into the park.
“There will be some searches. We still haven’t made entire plans on how we’re going to do that because it’s going be difficult to search all the people we hope are going to come,” said Light. “We will have some searches, maybe random searches. We don’t know yet.”
ABC-7 spoke with a mother who was at the park, Rosie Gonzalez. Gonzalez said she was happy about the new policy because she hoped it would encourage people to drink responsibly and promote a family-friendly atmosphere.
The department looked at other possible venues to host Music Under the Stars, including Ascarate Park, Cohen Stadium, and Fort Bliss, but decided to keep the music series at the Chamizal because people associate the series with the park and vice versa, City officials said.
The 2012 Music Under the Stars lineup:
June 10 Ivon Ulibarri and Caf Mocha (Salsa/Merengue) Albuquerque, NM
June 17 Sunny Ozuna and the Sunliners (Oldies) San Antonio, TX
June 24 Grupo Fantasma (Latin Funk) Austin, TX
July 4 El Paso Wind Symphony (Patriotic/Fireworks) El Paso, TX
July 8 Yellow Dubmarine (Reggae Tribute to The Beatles) Baltimore, MD
July 15 The Grascals (Bluegrass) Nashville, TN
July 22 Sarah King and the Smoke Rings (Swing) Brooklyn, NY
July 29 Tropicalisimo Apache (Cumbia Tropical) El Paso, TX
August 5 The Big Easy (Motown) El Paso, TX
August 12 Mariachi Reyna de los Angeles (Mariachi) El Monte, CA
