Some music at Fort Adams being silenced
By Matt Blanchette
@mattblanchette
the long standing Newport Concert Series continues to look for a new home. Organizers originally hoped to move to Fort Adams after the Newport Yachting Center was sold.
But they found out, it wasn’t that simple. It’s a very controversial issue in Newport right now.
But the reality is Fort Adams, while a potentially great concert venue, is also a state park, and getting approval to use the facility takes time.
“…everything from Ziggy Marley to Willie Nelson to Tony Bennett….“
A lot of big names have played the Newport waterfront over the years, but the new owners of the Yachting Center chose to no longer have concerts there.
That left Michele Maker Palmieri and her company Newport Waterfront Events looking for a new place to play.
“And we talked about moving all of the events across to harbor to Fort Adams,” Palmeiri said.
But that is where controversy started. Many Newport residents were concerned about the noise, traffic and crowds those events would bring to the park.
Palmieri first had to get the city council to approve the idea, which they did 4–3 in February.
Since it’s state land, it then needed to be approved by DEM and by the Rhode Island state properties committee.
That process just ended on Tuesday, far too close to the summer for Palmieri to book the acts she had planned.
“We at that point could not hold on to those artists,” she said. “We were hoping that maybe they were still holding dates but by that point they had moved on. It is the reality of concert booking.“
Palmieri hopes that the success of concerts that will be held at Fort Adams this summer including two associated with the Volvo Ocean Race will only make it more likely for more concerts to be held here next summer.
A member of DEM official says that while they are certainly open to the idea, since it is a state park, they must also consider the many other requests for events to be held at the park.
This summer Newport Waterfront events will host concerts at the Fort on May 9 and 14 in association with the Volvo race They will also host the chowder cookoff on June 6.
