Vote revives Grateful Dead reunion
11:12 PM 6/28/02
Richard W. Jaeger Regional reporter

indentELKHORN - The Grateful Dead is alive.
indentThe Walworth County Board Executive Committee voted 5-0 Friday approving a permit to allow the Alpine Valley Music Theater to stage a pair of reunion concerts of the Grateful Dead band Aug. 3 and 4.
indentThe action reverses an earlier ruling by the county's Highway Committee, which oversees Alpine Valley's license, to cancel the shows. Supervisors were concerned the event will attract as many as 200,000 concert-goers without tickets and cause health, safety and law enforcement problems. Some 70,000 tickets have already been sold for the two days. Alpine Valley can handle 35,000 to 50,000 people, promoters say.
indentClear Channel Entertainment, which operates the theater at East Troy, had appealed the highway committee. Attorneys for Clear Channel argued the ruling was based on before-the-fact predictions of non-compliance with county rules dealing with traffic and crowd control.
indentThe Walworth promoter also contended the highway committee violated its constitutional rights by selectively rejecting the Dead concerts because of the type of music the group plays and because of the fans it attracts. The county denied those claims.
indentThe "Terrapin Station - A Grateful Dead Family Reunion" event reunites Dead band members Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann, Phil Lesh and Bob Weir for the first time since the death of Jerry Garcia, the Dead's leader and founder. Garcia died in 1995 of a heart attack.
indentExecutive committee members went into closed session for several hours Friday after receiving a detailed plan negotiated between the Walworth County Sheriff's Department and Clear Channel and after hearing public testimony, much of it from fans attending the second day of meetings on the appeal.
indentDavid Bretl, Walworth County administrator, said Clear Channel offered a plan to help stem some of the concerns raised by the sheriff and residents in the area of the concert grounds. They worried about problems like those during a 1989 Dead concert at Alpine when large numbers of fans without tickets turned out and destroyed property in the area. A number of arrests were made.
indentClear Channel officials pointed out that they did not operate Alpine Valley at the time of that concert.
indentBretl said Clear Channel agreed to post a $100,000 bond to cover property and any other damage from the August concert and agreed to cover all overtime costs for law enforcement used in patrolling the concerts.
indent"The sheriff still expressed concern about limiting the number to 35,000 for each day of the concert," Bretl said. "Clear Channel said they would conduct a media campaign to discourage fans without tickets from showing up and said they would simulcast the concert(s), possibly over the Internet."
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