A Week After Revealing Lone Star Park as New Site, Starfest May Be Homeless Again

The Starfest Music Festival announcements just keep coming. Last Friday, the festival said Lone Star Park would be its new home after the city of Plano terminated its contract with the pop-up festival. Yesterday, rumors circulated that the Sept. 8 and 9 dates would have to be changed to accommodate the park’s schedule.

Today, the festival addressed those rumors on its official site, saying they were indeed looking at other dates and venues.

You cheered Rocky Balboa on because he trained, did hours and hours of hard work, and seized an opportunity when he got a title shot. But would you cheer for him if he openly bragged about his reputation and kept changing the date of the fight?

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"While we were pleased to announce that Lone Star Park in Grand Prarie [sic] would be able to accommodate us for the festival, the management informed us on Monday morning that the facility was previously booked for an outside event on their parking lots that would take up 80% of usable parking for our guests," the message read. "The team at Lone Star Park has been diligently working with us directly to help facilitate us with other dates in one capacity or another. This unfortunately may cause us to push back our event or move locations. More details to follow, but this Cinderella Story is not over yet! Stay tuned..."

The organizers have blamed the press for hurting the festival by reporting on its developments, the festival's model and the organizers’ public statements. Starfest co-founder Shamar Willis took to Instagram on Aug. 17 to share a screenshot of a Dallas Observer profile from 2016. The caption read, “First they love you..Then they hate you..they’ll love me again #Blessed #PositiveVibes #Dallas #LetsGetIt”

The phrase “Cinderella story” casts Starfest as an underdog, but the ongoing shifts and public disorganization make it hard to root for. You cheered for Rocky Balboa because he trained, did hours and hours of hard work, and seized an opportunity when he got a title shot. But would you cheer for him if he openly bragged and kept changing the date of the fight?

General admission prices for the festival have gone down and start at $49. The Moon Club is $250, and the VIP Galaxy is $400. But other VIP packages are more expensive; now there's a $15,000 option. The VIP Universe package gets you a private box suite and unlimited food and alcohol for the festival.

Starfest is the music festival that won’t give in or give up. While that’s commendable, this experiment continues to cause head scratching.