HAMLET — The Seaboard Festival has shifted into neutral its plans to build a $15,000 permanent stage and deed it to the city. Instead, festival board members voted Tuesday to build on another, larger site and decide later whether to give it away.
In June, Seaboard Festival president Kim Lindsey appeared before the Hamlet City Council to offer members a 20-by-30-foot stage, gratis — as long as the city guaranteed the festival could lease it every October for 10 years. Council members accepted and ordered that a deed be drawn up.
All of that is on hold now. Instead, Lindsey and her husband, David — a council member — want to give the festival a family-owned plot roughly twice the size of the A&P lot on which the stage was to have been built. Festival organizers would seek grant money to build a stage in time for the 2018 festival — not the 2017 completion date promised for the A&P lot. And it would decide later whether to deed the stage to the city or to insure and manage the land and stage itself.
“It’s a little off the beaten path” for the 35-year-old festival, Kim Lindsey said of the new piece of land. But “it’s not a horrible thing to overcome” with the use of maps and signs.
The asphalt-covered A&P property lies at the corner of Henderson and Jefferson streets and was, at one time, considered for a new police station. Festival organizers had worried that — some time in the distant future — the city might be too tempted to tear down a stage on that site, depriving the festival of its only concert venue.
“The possibility is so much smaller if we take (the stage) out of an asphalted parking lot” close to City Hall, Lindsey said.
At 1.62 acres, the new plot sits katy-cornered from the city’s former hospital, now the offices of Richmond County Schools. Across Vance Street sits the Veterans Administration clinic. And — perhaps appropos for the railroad-themed festival —behind the lot run train tracks.
The land is a couple of blocks from the main festival, which lines Main Street every year.
The plot is grassy, twice as big as the A&P lot and has its own water source.
If the stage were built there, Kim Lindsey told board members, the festival could fence it in and add permanent rest rooms “when we save up our pennies.” And, it could build a “more rustic” model, surrounding it with plants.
Trouble is, the new plan can’t possibly come together in time for this year’s festival, as the old plan promised. Instead, organizers will maintain the music venue on the old A&P site this year and rent a larger, more posh stage.
That gives board members time to write a soup-to-nuts grant request that will include not only the materials to build the stage but to buy plants and fencing. Even without grant money, Lindsey said, the nonprofit board has enough set aside for a stage.
Because the city and festival have yet to agree on deeding over the A&P lot, the two entities will have to come up with a new agreement — if the festival wants to give the stage to the city. Board members meeting Tuesday seemed to like the idea of managing their own events throughout the year, especially in the spring.
“The reason you don’t hear of (many special events in Hamlet) is because, where are you going to do it?” Kim Lindsey told council members last month. On Tuesday, thoughts of a new stage on grassy land set board members’ eyes sparkling with possibilities — Easter sunrise services, tribute band concerts and Elvis impersonators.
“If we build this stage, we will see a whole new chunk of (festival vendors) open up,” Lindsey said. “We’re going to start lining down (neighboring) streets.”
Reach reporter Christine Carroll at 910-817-2673.