City Park Jazz grapples with rainouts, low attendance as costs spike

Denver’s beloved City Park Jazz series has been the victim of unusually stormy weather since it launched its 2023 season on June 4, with heavy rains and hail cutting down audiences — and donations — amid increased costs and new Denver parks regulations.

“We were able to pull off the first show when the rain abated a half hour beforehand, but we only ended up getting a few hundred people,” said Dave Flomberg, director of marketing for City Park Jazz, which this year is celebrating its 37th season. “Which is better than nothing. But it was off our normal few thousand, even for a slow show.”

However, the Sunday, June 11, concert with Stafford Hunter & Jazz Explorations was canceled entirely due to fast-moving storms and safety concerns, Flomberg said.

The nonprofit City Park Jazz typically reserves about a year’s worth of extra funds on top of its $100,000 annual budget so it can ensure the free, all-ages series has a healthy future. But sharply increased costs ranging from portable toilets and event staffing have taken a bite out of its revenue. As a result, this year’s budget has been adjusted to about $150,000, Flomberg said, or 50% higher than usual.

A new Denver Parks & Recreation rule forces City Park Jazz officials to close two of the park’s gates at 5:30 p.m. if enough people show up for the concert. But it also necessitates private security, given that City Park Jazz doesn’t want its volunteers to be put in the position of turning potentially angry people away.

Not that that was even an option on June 11.

“The upside is that we did just win the Mayor’s Award for Excellence in Art & Culture, (the publicity from) which helps a little to defray that cost,” Flomberg said, noting the award’s $10,000 prize. “But one third of our season’s costs are usually defrayed by donations at shows, through the bucket brigade, and those didn’t happen (Sunday),” Flomberg said.

City Park Jazz bookers do not maintain an “acts of nature” clause that would allow them pull back on paying performers, Flomberg said. Nor would they want to do that, since artists clear their schedules to be there and could lose out on other gigs as a result. But City Park Jazz still has to pay for its vendors, permits and insurance costs regardless of whether the donation bucket makes it around the crowd.

Officials are hoping to find an endowment partner that would allow them to be solvent in the long term while also shifting their goals to becoming a grantor themselves and support jazz education for young musicians (potential donations can be routed through cityparkjazz.org/united4jazz).

“If this (rainy weather) continues we’ll have to get a little creative with what we do next season based on the revenue loss,” Flomberg said. “I wouldn’t say it’s dire at this point, but if we get another three or four of these strung together, it’s going to get a little dicey. We’re not freaking out yet.”

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