Pittsylvania County issued the following announcement on September 28.
As has been widely reported, the Blue Ridge Country Festival, which was scheduled for this weekend, has been postponed until 2022. During a special called meeting in June, the Board of Supervisors had approved the issuance of a permit for the Blue Ridge Country Festival. This application was approved with conditions around Purpose Driven Events, the company operating the Blue Ridge Ampitheater in Blairs, providing proper plans and final documentation for areas like traffic, parking, camping, and security, among other things. However, those final documents were never provided, Purpose Driven Events never paid the required permit fee, and an actual permit for the event was never officially issued.
Pittsylvania County Administrator David Smitherman, after consulting with officials including the Pittsylvania County Sheriff, Virginia State Police, Virginia Department of Health, VDOT and other regulatory agencies, sent a letter to Purpose Driven Events on Tuesday, September 21 stating that the festival permits were rescinded until updated and complete plans were submitted to the proper agencies. That letter offered Purpose Driven Events several steps to complete by Thursday, September 23 if they wished to move forward with planning their event and obtaining an official permit.
On Thursday, the event promoter informed Pittsylvania County that it was highly likely that the event would be postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and said that, as a result, he would not move forward with providing the requested documentation. The next day, the event promoter informed Pittsylvania County that he was working with artists and other parties to make a formal postponement announcement, which was released to ticketholders on Monday and the general public today.
The Chatham Star Tribune reported that, according to Pittsylvania County and the Health Department, the event organizers provided verifiably false reason as to why the event was cancelled. That is incorrect. While the permits for the festival were rescinded, the event promoters stayed in consistent contact with the County and were transparent that COVID implications would likely require postponement of the event. The requested documentation was not provided due to these COVID related concerns.
Original source can be found here.
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