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Lang’s Latest Woodstock Vision
Michael Lang – he of Woodstock festival fame – hopes to build a permanent concert venue on the Saugerties, N.Y., farm property that hosted Woodstock ’94, marking the original’s 25th anniversary.
There is already a permanent venue,
He was to make his plans public to the Saugerties Town Board, scheduled to meet July 24, for the site he hopes to open next summer at Winston Farms, according to the Daily Freeman newspaper.
Instead of a mass concert site capable of drawing Woodstock ’94’s 350,000 estimated fans, the new center will be about the size of a typical amphitheatre. “It won’t be 100,000,” Lang told the paper. “Twenty thousand is a comfortable number, but it could be 30,000, it could be 25,000. We don’t have that down yet.”
Jeremy Schaller, one of Winston Farms’ owners, reportedly approached the Town Board about concerts being hosted on the 850-acre property in the years leading up to a possible Woodstock 50th anniversary bash in 2019. However, Lang doesn’t seem to be as enthused.
“It’s not really about 2019,” he said. “I called Jeremy (Schaller) because I had this sort of idea that the thing we had always wanted to do there after (Woodstock) ’94, the performing arts center, was something that would be viable,” he told the Freeman.
Lang also said he would manage the site, but leave the talent buying duties to other promoters.
“In the first year, we want to start off with people that we know who do their work very well who’ve done this for a very long time so that we can have confidence in the production quality and the event quality,” Lang said. “Once we establish what the site can handle comfortably … then we’ll see what things can be available (the) next summer.” For now, he says he expects no more than four of five shows at the site in 2013.
Of course, Lang’s plans are dependent on the approval of the Saugerties Town Board. A previous proposal for such a center was scotched in 2004.