Ultra Music Festival has now been held in the city of Miami for over 20 years now.
But the last few years have seen the festival organizers face their fair share of trouble with the city of Miami and the residents.
After rumors or pressure tactics, whichever they were, Ultra was set to move out of Miami for its 2020 edition. This lead to the City re-evaluating the pros and cons of allowing Ultra to take place in the city of Miami. After a one-off edition that took place at Virginia Key in March 2019, Ultra was fast to figure out that, that wasn’t going to work out for them. Later last year among rumors of Ultra leaving Miami, in what was reported to have been an at times an explosive debate, the Miami City Commission voted 3-2 to offer a revokable license agreement to allow Ultra to return to their Bayfront Park home.
After months of back-and-forth and a number of revised proposals, the City officially agreed upon Ultra’s return to Bayfront Park. But as reported by the Miami Herald in November last year, with four months to go, Ultra had no finalized Contracts in place.
They also mentioned the delay might be since, in previous years, Ultra worked out agreements faster with the semi-autonomous agency that manages the park, the Bayfront Park Management Trust. However, this year, the City Commission and administration — the government that outranks the trust — chose to handle the high-profile Ultra deal instead.
Now we move two months ahead and just two months away from the festival and not much has changed. There are still no signed contracts and to add to their woes, residents of Miami are suing the city to try and prevent Ultra Music Festival from going forward this March.
In an updated report by the Miami Herald, Last Tuesday, more than a dozen residents from the Downtown Neighbors Alliance backed by attorney Sam Dubbin, filed a four-count suit in Miami-Dade Circuit Court. The complaint accuses the city of violating its own charter, permitting an illegal nuisance and flouting its own public bidding laws when commissioners approved a licensing agreement to allow Ultra to use Bayfront Park.
“Between 2012 and 2019, the city allowed Ultra to conduct music festivals in Bayfront Park, and blast catastrophic volumes of noise into plaintiffs’ and other downtown Miami residents’ homes, depriving them of the quiet enjoyment of their homes, and also depriving plaintiffs and other downtown residents access to Bayfront Park for several months each year,” reads the complaint.
While the festival will have other deadlines to meet once a contract is signed, including payments to the city, a traffic management plan, and permits, they are continuing to sell tickets and promote the event as per usual. Phase one of the lineup has been announced featuring Zedd, Armin Van Buuren, Flume, Martin Garrix and more. A dedicated Resistance Miami lineup has also been announced with stellar B2B’s and B3B’s but also top class acts like Adam Beyer, Cirez D, Carl Cox and many more.
Ultra Music Festival is set to take place from March 20-22, 2020 at Bayfront Park Miami and tickets and details are available here.
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