VIII Fest
 

As posted in another thread, it looks like some sort of design/production/arts studio is moving into one of the units at 123 James N.

Their site reveals their plan for a new music festival at Gage Park.

http://viiifest.com/

This will actually be the second year for VIIIth Day in Gage Park. Apparently they launched a year ago this Friday.

Despite a disappointing Kickstarter campaign, the group mounted a festival last September and plans to expand from two to three stages in 2015.

Aha, looks like the changed the name but the concept is the same. Look forward to seeing how it ends up this year.

Headliners were announced last week: www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jIfaK-y8mE

Not too shabby all things considered.

Well it ended up being a giant clusterfuck, not really surprised but sucks to hear as Hamilton could really use a quality music festival downtown for us electronic/hip-hop fans.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/news/city-yanks-permits-for-viii-fest-in-gage-park-1.3243991

They announced event info & headliners July 16 and three days later announced 1,000+ tickets on pre-sale alone. Two days after that it was described as being three times bigger than VIIIfest 2014.

From a Cut From Steel Q&A at that stage:

Q – In terms of the festival – the magnitude of this thing is very impressive. 3 days. 50 acts, and this is happening in about a month. How are you guys doing this? It seems like a huge operation.
It is definitely a huge operation. All it really takes is wristband sales and contracting the right people and a whole lot of faith! The team (Cameron Moore and Priscilla Ren) help me greatly to make sure everything goes smoothly.

Q – What kind of security and logistics hurdles are you facing putting this thing on at Gage Park?
Security wise, the goal is 5,000 in attendance. We will gage the security needs closer to the date.

Originally scheduled August 19-21, VIIIfest’s dates were switched to September 23-25 on the eve of the festival. At the time, organizers claimed that that the City changed the terms of the permit, but it actually might have been the earliest possible date available to them. Event applications for city parks must be received at least 60 days before the event is slated to start, which coincidentally turns out to be roughly the time between their initial July 16 announcement and the revised date.

If they were running on "a whole lot of faith," maybe they had a last-minute awakening about secular legal and logistical constraints.