This letter is in response to Mr. Valdez who thinks the county should buy Konocti Harbor.
I too, am sad that Konocti was closed. I don”t drink or gamble so that part of it doesn”t bother me. But I did enjoy the concerts there. I agree that the closing had an impact on local employment as well. It”s also true that local graduates have very little to look forward to. You correctly pointed out that the missing tax revenues could endanger county employees” jobs. In fact, I agree with your entire statement, except for one very important thing.
“… spend a few million dollars to save such a money making machine.”
If Konocti was truly a money making machine, it would still be there. Just like with an old car, there eventually comes a time when it costs more to keep it running than it is even worth, so you have to let it go.
I”ve read numerous schemes (most of which are ridiculous) to reopen Konocti in some form or another, but I have never heard of one that would cut the concert venue off from the resort and operate it as a separate venture.
Why is that?
Am I missing something?
In every single public forum I have ever seen or heard of, it is quite clear that although not everybody is unhappy that the resort was closed, everybody who posed an opinion about it is unhappy that the concert venue was closed.
The amphitheater was great for several reasons.
Locals liked it because it provided top-level national touring acts and it didn”t take three hours to get to it. It”s nice to see a great concert and be back home again in only 20 minutes. Bonus feature: Concerts required only $5 in the gas tank, not $30 or $40.
Bands liked it because of all the little improvements that had been made over the years all added up to make it a great place to play. It was small enough for them to feel close to the audience (like a club) and still big enough to park enough butts in the seats to make it worth it to add it as a tour stop. Of course the benefits of playing at a beautiful mountain lake resort appealed to the bands as well.
The bosses who originally created the amphitheater project gave themselves a tough job to do. I don”t mean it was tough to actually build the amphitheater, but to have their creation get any respect ? enough respect to attract quality acts. Nobody wants to play at a place nobody else plays at.
Imagine yourself as an investor. Your sales pitch would be something like this: “We want you to come play at our brand new amphitheater. It”s 100 miles away from San Francisco, on a dark, twisty two-lane mountain road.
“We have no history to estimate how many tickets we can expect to sell. Nobody has played here before so we have no references from other touring acts. The county we”re in has a low median income and not many people are likely to be able to afford $50 to $75 tickets.
“There are no other venues in our area that are booking national acts. One time, 25 years ago, the local fairgrounds booked Glen Campbell and Tanya Tucker for a one-nighter and it didn”t sell enough to cover expenses.”
It was a tough sell. It took a real effort. The Konocti bosses did what had to be done and they got the job done.
The first few years were pretty weak, but they got a little better every year.
It took years, but the amphitheater eventually earned a reputation as a legitimate tour stop for top national touring acts.
I”ve been there at least 25 times over the years. Most times attendance looked pretty good. There have been a few times that attendance seemed kind of low, but those few were more than balanced by the handful of shows that were packed so full that people had to park in that dirty orchard across the street from the resort.
I think that as a whole it had been operating in the red for years and it couldn”t sustain itself like that forever. Like your favorite old hound dog, as much as you hated to do it, it had to be put down.
I just wish the concert venue could be re-opened as a separate entity and continue to provide us locals with high-quality entertainment like it used to do.
James Bone
Longtime Lake County resident and concert-goer
