Applicants withdraw plan for Gulch Fest

FORT COLLINS — Citing the cost of meeting Larimer County’s 35 conditions for approval, organizers have withdrawn their application to hold a music and art festival in July on a property just south of the Wyoming border.

“We don’t have the time or money to fulfill this,” Gulch Fest Music and Arts Gathering representative Hailee Nolan told county commissioners on Monday during a land-use hearing.

The festival would have drawn up to 375 spectators to an event held July 11-14 on land owned by Timothy Dale and Goldrie Huenink at 36292 N. U.S. Highway 287, a scenic 10-acre tract east of the highway and within sight of the “Welcome to Colorful Colorado” sign at the border.

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Contending that the festival “can be compatible with no substantial impact on surrounding properties,” the county’s Development Services Team had approved the application from Gulch Roots Movement, the organization sponsoring the event, but added conditions addressing noise health, water and wastewater, food and sanitation, bear awareness, access to emergency services, and other concerns raised by such entities as the Livermore Fire Protection District, Colorado Department of Transportation and Colorado State Patrol.

“The concerns are very valid,” Nolan told the commissioners, but “we just don’t have what it takes financially to accommodate these requests, such as renting an ambulance for the whole weekend, renting CDOT-approved signs, professional traffic control, a more expensive stage than we had originally planned, more Porta-Potties and bear-proof dumpsters on top of paying for bands and production.”

A fundraiser held last weekend aimed at covering the costs “just wasn’t as fruitful as we would have hoped,” Nolan said.

Organizers had taken steps such as providing an on-site registered nurse and a medical tent, prohibiting sales of alcoholic beverages, and scheduling their event during the warmest days of summer to help justify a ban on open fires.

Nolan contended that some of the conditions had been added because a rough draft of their plan, which predicted 500 attendees, was being circulated instead of the group’s later plan for an audience one-fourth smaller.

Gulch Fest started in 2018 at a privately owned parcel called Whitetail Draw northwest of Greeley and was held annually through 2022 except for a break in 2020 because of COVID-19 restrictions. But as more people showed up every year, organizers realized they needed to go through a permitting process. They found that process difficult in Weld County but, at least initially, easier in Larimer County.

The festival’s website for the 2024 event had listed planned musical acts including Los Toms, Shadow Work, The Bramblers, Dreamspace Database and other psychedelic rock and electronic dance music performers.

Although county staffers determined that the stage’s load rating of 125 pounds per square foot was “adequate,” they wrote that “neither stages nor tents are rated for the ultimate wind speed of the site. Therefore, the organizers must create, print, post and train staff on a high-wind action plan including monitoring wind speeds, setting wind speed trigger levels, suspending events, taking down stage side or rear walls and tents, and evacuating people for a minimum distance around structures if winds hit trigger levels.”