The Janus Jazz Aspen August 30 – September 2 event, which includes headliners Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Macy Gray and the Grateful Dead's Phil Lesh, is a go despite the objections of two Pitkin County commissioners who have complained about turning the Cozy Point Ranch into a huge parking lot every time a large event plays the city.
The base of Buttermilk as the venue and Cozy Point as the parking lot was approved in a 3-2 vote July 10. As many as 10,000 tickets may be sold for each of the festival's four days. However, in the event's 10-year history, the largest number of tickets ever sold for a single show was 7,000.
"Cars for 10,000 people. We need to talk about that. We need to do something about that, and it never happens," Commissioner Dorothea Farris said in the Aspen Daily News. "I'm tempted to say, 'Absolutely not. We're not going to park there.' And maybe if we do that enough, somebody somewhere will be forced to consider, including us, where we're going to put these cars if we're going to have big events that bring in 10,000 people."
Farris and Commissioner Mick Ireland voted against the parking as a means to force examination into new parking possibilities for big event parking.
Cozy Point was last used for parking in January for the ESPN Winter X Games, which on peak days drew as many as 13,000 people.
