AEG planning new music festival at Rose Bowl

Forget the sweaty drive down the 10 to Coachella: Soon you may not need to go much farther than the Gold Line to attend a major music festival.

The Pasadena City Council voted on Monday to approve plans for the Arroyo Seco Music and Arts Festival, a new festival promoted by Coachella’s parent company, AEG. The Pasadena Star news broke early reports of the agreement.

The planned three-day festival would take place inside the Rose Bowl and on adjacent grounds including the Brookside Golf Course. It could draw up to 90,000 people daily.

The festival could also be a boon for the Rose Bowl Operating Co., which has courted other tenants outside standbys such as UCLA football and the Rose Parade to fill the stadium. The stadium underwent a $180-million renovation in 2012.

However, organizers stressed that it’s not going to be another Coachella in the L.A. metro area. The festival is being pitched as a more family-friendly event, with mainstream music acts and a variety of other inter-generational entertainment like a Kidspace Childrens’ Museum-associated area and theater and literary exhibitions.

“This is not Coachella; we are not coming here in anyway to try to sell you on what we do in the desert,” Nic Adler, an AEG festival producer, told the Star-News. “We think there is a niche.... That is what is going to make this successful.”

The festival is expected to debut in a reduced two-day version in June 2017. Though the 10-year operating agreement hasn’t been signed, the Pasadena City Council has authorized two additional five-year extensions. The council also raised a cap on the number of major events at Rose Bowl from 12 to 15, with the planned festival counting as three events.

Follow @AugustBrown for breaking music news.

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