Festival Grounds has a cause: It needs more parties

By John Katsilometes

Friday, April 1, 2016 | 2 a.m.

As you drive along Sahara Avenue from the I-15 onramp east toward the Las Vegas Strip, you cannot help but notice the great expanse to your right.

“You see it, and it looks like a park that has green grass and a lot of space, but nobody is using it,” MGM Resorts executive Chris Baldizan said. “It looks like a truly civic-type space that would be great for concerts and food festivals. But, as we know, developing those events takes a lot of time.”

That turf is artificial, but the sentiment is very real for Baldizan. MGM Resorts’ senior vice president of entertainment is eager to put on the party at that approximately 50-acre space known as Las Vegas Festival Grounds. That happens today through Sunday with the Academy of Country Music Party for a Cause.

Crowds of 18,000 to 20,000 people are expected for each day of Party for a Cause. Most ticket-holders have purchased three-day passes (15,000 to 16,000 have been purchased, Baldizan said), with the remainder of the crowds holding single-day wristbands.

Driven by philanthropy, Party for a Cause benefits the ACM Lifting Lives foundation, which supports military programs that employ music therapy to treat veterans and wounded servicemen and servicewomen. Money raised also is used to help return these veterans to everyday civilian life.

The performances of Party for a Cause are headlined on the main stage — make that the Ram Trucks Main Stage — by Carrie Underwood at 10:25 p.m. today, Dierks Bentley at 10:10 p.m. Saturday and Kenny Chesney at 7:10 p.m. Sunday. Tonight’s lineup also features Martina McBride and Kellie Pickler. Saturday, it's Chris Stapleton, Chris Young and Lee Brice leading to Bentley’s slot; Sunday, Kip Moore and Sam Hunt precede Chesney. (For a full festival schedule, maps and other information, go to ACMCountry.com).

But it’s more than music at the Festival Grounds, which will be replete with “country lifestyle” attractions and amenities. The ACM Expo entrance on the southeast corner of the parcel leads to dozens of food and retail kiosks. A Ferris wheel and Super Shot thrill ride are on the site, with the main stage built on the northeast corner, same as the primary stage position for Rock in Rio last May.

Why, it’s as if a cowboy-themed theme park has spilled across the grounds. This festival is even open to all ages.

“This event has moved around, from Mandalay Bay to the Orleans, then to the Linq and Dallas last year,” Baldizan said, charting the Party for a Cause tour of Las Vegas and — for its 50th anniversary in 2015 — AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. “But we see it being held on the Festival Grounds next year and for the foreseeable future.”

We can be less sure of the use of the Festival Grounds for other events. In an unexpected development, Party for a Cause is just the second event in the 11 months the Festival Grounds has been an active entertainment venue. The first, and only, was Rock in Rio last May.

The lesson learned from Rock in Rio, which by varying reports lost $22 million to $30 million in its first year, was, “You’ve got to have a lot of stomach to put these big festivals on knowing that you will lose money in the first two to three years,” Baldizan says. “There is such a proliferation of festivals in the West, and when you consider the arenas and theaters being built and the energy it takes to put on a big festival, it is a big undertaking.”

While saying “we have a lot of great ideas that have led to great discussion,” there is nothing to announce at Festival Grounds other than the expected return of Party for a Cause in 2017.

Of particular concern is the status of Rock in Rio as a regular event on the Strip. Nearly a year after ending their two-weekend, four-night first foray into Las Vegas, Rock in Rio officials have said only that they intend to return to the Festival Grounds as scheduled next year.

But the festival’s return is not at all a certainty, as the economy in the festival’s home country of Brazil has suffered, and event investor SFX Entertainment field for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in February. It has to be expected that those financial issues need to be reviewed before Rock in Rio’s future in Las Vegas, or anywhere else in the U.S. next year, is finalized.

The most promising event that was expected to move north to Festival Grounds has been the Route 91 Harvest Country Music Festival, which for two years has filled Las Vegas Village across from Luxor and Mandalay Bay on the Strip. In its third Las Vegas festival last fall, Route 91 easily drew 25,000 people.

Baldizan’s vision has been to help Route 91 grow to the point where it would similarly fill the Festival Grounds. But MGM’s booking partner in the festival, Live Nation, specifically executive Brian O’Connell, has thus far balked at that option. The sense from Live Nation has been to fill the Village, with its great staging and wondrous views of famous Strip resorts, rather than roll the bones across the street from SLS Las Vegas.

Such annual events as Wine Amplified and the iHeart Radio Music Festival’s daytime outdoor concert could conceivably be moved north from the Village to the Festival Grounds.

“All of them could be relocated, eventually,” Baldizan said.

MGM Resorts officials have uniformly attempted to position their new venues — including both outdoor festival parcels and the new T-Mobile Arena — as civic-events centers. Baldizan reminds that MGM Resorts is merely a landlord in this arrangement, and anyone can book the parcels and hold events. Many conventions could use the acreage at Festival Grounds for gigantic, but private, events.

“We are faced with large groups who visit Las Vegas and have outgrown and need more space,” Baldizan said. “We have the infrastructure to have big shows outdoors, sports, festivals like what we have done at the Village. It’s very versatile.”

What has hindered the development of Las Vegas Festival Grounds as a major civic-events destination was its original name. The owners slapped MGM Resorts on both that parcel and the Las Vegas Village, a reminder of who actually owned that property.

“Looking back, if we made a mistake when we opened, it was that we branded them as MGM when they are really neutral sites,” Baldizan said. “So we had to step back and revisit that, but we are making headway. We have 42 million people visiting Las Vegas every year, and this is something that sets us apart.”

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