Threats to pull the plug on the Something in the Water music festival rang hollow as Virginia Beach decided to give the festival more time to hit key milestones leading up to the April event.
At its first meeting of the year, Virginia Beach city council voted to indefinitely defer a decision to give organizers five days to get back on track before the city cancelled the festival.
Instead, the city council will receive public weekly updates about the festival’s progress leading up to the April event.
Following the cancellation of the festival in October 2024, the city and festival organizers adopted a sponsorship agreement that outlined terms for the April 2024 festival. The city agreed to pay a $500,000 advance in installments as organizers met deadlines leading up to the event. One deadline required organizers to release an artist lineup and open ticket sales by Dec. 31, 2024.
The agreement gave the city the right to cancel the festival and pursue alternate programming for the last week of April if organizers didn’t hold to the contract.
Councilmember and festival liaison Amelia Ross-Hammond introduced the motion to delay the vote to enforce the contract. It passed 8-2 with several council members and the mayor speaking in favor of the economic and cultural benefits the festival brings to the city.
Councilmember Barbara Henley expressed some skepticism.
“We’re trying to build a little more latitude into the situation,” Mayor Bobby Dyer said to Henley.
“Well, I think we’ve been doing that,” she said. “There’s got to be a time when we say, ‘This is it, folks.’ I thought this was it.”
Henley voted against the motion, as well as first-time council member Cal “Cash” Jackson-Green.
Dyer introduced the vote to hold the organizers accountable to the contract breach, but he was pleased with the outcome of Tuesday’s meeting.
“My resolution provoked the discussion that we needed to have to get things moving forward,” he said after the meeting. “Sometimes you got to make the decisions and break the log jam.”
He reiterated his optimism for recapturing the magic of past festivals.
“The ultimate goal is to get to week 17 and make it a killer event that's safe with good things,” Dyer said after the meeting, referring to the 17th week of the year. “It's going to be good for the hotels. It's going to be good for everybody. Let's give them a chance.”
