LISBON COULD lose the opportunity to host the 2012 edition of the world’s largest open air rock-pop festival, Rock in Rio.
The organisers of the festival are considering throwing the event open to competitive bids from other municipal câmaras.
The last three editions of Rock in Rio have been staged at Lisbon’s Bela Vista Park in the north of the Portuguese capital on the last weekend of May and first weekend of June, attracting crowds of 150,000 each weekend.
The decision was taken to throw the venue open to competition because Lisbon’s new state-of-the-art public hospital Todos-os-Santos Hospital is to be built over the Bela Vista area.
Lisbon Câmara is concerned that it might lose one of the city’s key tourism draws and an important money spinner after rival Camera Vila Franca de Xira approved a proposal by its câmara member Bruno Ventura that its executive should “develop contacts with the Rock in Rio promoters as quick as possible suggesting a site down on the River Tejo.”
This would be possible because the River Tejo waterfront extends into domains run by the Câmara Municipal de Vila Franca de Xira which is anxious to bag the lucrative deal which would bring hundreds of thousands of concert goers into an town which is otherwise left off the tourist beaten track.
“Vila Franca’s willingness to throw open its doors to the event is total and they too are making contacts,” said Bruno Ventura.
The President of the Câmara Municipal de Lisboa, António Costa, has already confirmed that the 2010 edition of Rock in Rio will go ahead at Bela Vista Park.
“We know that Vila Franca de Xira has excellent conditions and the land available to host the musical event on the other side of the River Tejo Vasco de Gama Bridge,” he said.
Bruno Ventura explained that Vila Franca de Xira had already lost several opportunities in terms of development for the town, such as the site for the new IKEA superstore and the NBP Film Studios.
Maria da Luz Rosinha, President of the Câmara Municipal de Vila Franca de Xira, warned that there had been situations that the authority had been unable to overcome related to the cost of buying up or hiring out land.
The Câmara Municipal de Loures is another municipal authority said to be interested in hosting the event.
Its executive has already confirmed having “made contacts” with Rock-in-Rio organizers headed up by Brazilian entrepreneur Roberto Medina, who has stated his intention to find a purpose-built site within Greater Lisbon where Rock in Rio could be “built from the ground up.”
“I know Lisbon very well, but I haven’t really started thinking in detail about that yet. There’s Monsanto, various parcels of land along the Tejo riverfront, and other sites,” Roberto Medina told the news agency Lusa.
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