Coachella Organizers Threatening to Take 2014 Off and Move the Festival Elsewhere

Timothy Norris

If the initiative makes it onto the November ballot, they warn, they would move both Coachella and the Stagecoach music festival out of Indio, and possibly out of the Coachella Valley entirely.

In that scenario, say Goldenvoice president Paul Tollett and Alex Haagen III, owner of the Indio Polo Club (where the festival is now held), they will build a new venue elsewhere.

"[W]e're going to take off 2014," Tollett threatened to the Desert Sun, which covers Palm Springs and the Coachella Valley. "2015 we'll be at a new facility outside of Indio."

The measure, proposed by councilman Sam Torres, applies to 2014 and would require an extra five to ten percent tax on admissions fees to events with attendance above 2,500 people. Tollett estimates that would come down to about $36 per ticket for a festival that drew nearly half a million attendees over its two weekends in April.

Tollett says he has no plans to tack those fees onto ticket prices, so the cost to promoters would thus be in the millions. Ticket prices for 2013 have already jumped by $34 to a total of $349 for next year's festival; a portion of that increase, $2.33 per ticket, has been allocated specifically for the City of Indio.

Torres estimates that the proposed tax will amount to only about $18 extra per ticket, which would go toward balancing the city's books after recent budget cuts.

On June 6 the Indio City Council chose not to consider Torres' proposal, but the councilman is nonetheless pursuing a petition drive to get the measure on the ballot by Aug. 10, which Torres said would need around 2,700 signatures to move forward.

Event organizers say they're far from eager to move, but...