Taking Stock of Woodstock
If Max Yasgur's field turns into a performing arts center, will Woodstock fans be able to get back to the garden?
By Elizabeth Benjamin | Online Only | Jan. 24, 2003
Max Yasgur's field
Credit: Woodstock Preservation Alliance
For three famous days in August 1969, Max Yasgur's bowl-shaped alfalfa field in the otherwise sleepy small town of Bethel, N.Y., teemed with half a million young people. They lived in tents, frolicked in the mud, ingested illegal substances, and grooved to the music.
Today the field has a new owner. Alan Gerry, a local septuagenarian billionaire who bought Yasgur's alfalfa patch for $1 million in 1997 and later purchased the surrounding 1,400 acres, hopes to bring the people and the music back to Bethel, N.Y., but in a decidedly 21st-century way.
Gerry wants to construct a multi-building performing arts center on and around the site of the original Woodstock Music and Art Fair. His $40 million plan would include a museum dedicated to the 1960s, retail and food vendors, and several concert venues, including an open-air stage on the exact spot where Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin performed 34 years ago.
"This is a logical way to breathe life back into that field," says Jonathan Drapkin, executive director of the nonprofit Gerry Foundation Inc., based in Liberty, N.Y., which is in charge of developing the site.
Modern protesters
Credit: Wayne Skala
But a small yet passionate group that calls itself the Woodstock Preservation Alliance, which exists largely on the Internet, says the site has its own life. In fact, its 50 active members say, the old festival site is sacred ground and should be left undeveloped. They are particularly concerned with the 37 acres that include Yasgur's field: a grass-covered bowl that forms a natural amphitheater. (The field's unusual shape was a selling point for Woodstock organizers after officials in the festival's namesake town 60 miles away barred the event from taking place there.)
So far, the group has collected about 3,000 signatures online from like-minded individuals. "Digging up that land and putting permanent structures there just has a bad feeling," says Carolyn "Wyldflower" Madsen, an alliance board member. "If you walk the site, you get a sense of the history that went on there, a feeling of the spirits of the people that were there."
Madsen, 51, neither lives nor works in Bethel, and she didn't attend Woodstock in 1969. Nevertheless, she feels connected to the Bethel site as do hundreds of others, many of whom make pilgrimages—for some, an annual ritual—to see the field. People gathered there for musical reunions until Gerry purchased the property six years ago.
The alliance approved of the Gerry Foundation's initial proposal to build a performing arts center near the 37-acre property. (The site isn't listed on any local, state, or national historic registers). When the plan was first unveiled in 2001, it called for the construction of a pavilion on property adjacent to Yasgur's old field known as the Gabriel farm. But that attitude changed as the project grew.
The alliance could accept some development of the land around the 37 acres in conjunction with creation of a performing arts center, although its members wouldn't be happy about it, Madsen says. They could also live with construction of an open-air stage where the old Woodstock stage once stood. But anything more than that on what many call "the original site," despite the fact that concert-goers were spread out over many miles during those three days in 1969, is not acceptable, Madsen says.
The animosity between the Gerry Foundation and Woodstockers is not new. Alan Gerry doesn't take kindly to strangers wandering on his land. He has fenced the 37-acre field and once even spread manure on the site to discourage visitors.
Policing the "Day in the Garden"
Credit: Wayne Skala
Alliance members insist that the commercialization of Woodstock is doomed to fail. But Gerry staged two modestly successful music festivals there in 1998 and 1999, charging more than the original $18 Woodstock tickets and providing un-1969 perks like ATM machines and lattes. Together, Gerry's concerts attracted nearly 100,000 people. The events were placid compared to the revivals held by the original Woodstock promoters, who own the famed festival's name and trademark. Rapes, overflowing toilets, rioting fans, and grumbles about high-priced tickets and $4 bottled water marred the 1994 and 1999 events.
Gerry's smooth-running "Day in the Garden" concerts are just one example of how the Gerry Foundation is trying to prove it will be a good neighbor once its performing arts center is built.
Sullivan County officials, seeing a unique opportunity to restore the county as a tourist destination, back Gerry's proposal. Once renowned for its resort hotels, the county fell on hard times as visitors bypassed its rolling hills for tonier destinations. "We're working very hard to enhance and diversify the economic development of Sullivan County, and we certainly think the performing arts center might be the crown jewel in the entire process," says Michael Sullivan, president of the Sullivan County Partnership for Economic Development.
"I find it difficult to believe how anyone could find fault with the exhaustive plans and investment that is being made on the site," Sullivan says. "This takes the best aspects of that 1969 event and preserves them."
Woodstock Preservation Alliance
Credit: Woodstock Preservation Alliance
It looks like the alliance doesn't have much choice but to accept that Yasgur's old field will soon change. The state has pledged $15 million for the Gerry Foundation's performing arts center complex. Town officials have unanimously approved the project's environmental impact study and recently passed a zoning change for 635 of the 1,400 acres from agricultural and residential to performing arts district: the last obstacle preventing the Gerry Foundation from applying for building permits. The foundation hopes to begin building sometime in 2004, and says construction of the $40 million project should be completed in 12 years.
Indicating a sign of resignation from at least one of the alliance board members, Madsen, who used to close her e-mails with "peace and love and focus on the site," says she now substitutes the word "spirit" for "site." But if Gerry's plan is realized, she says, it will forever change her feelings about the field.
"I don't think I'll go back there if they build on that land; I'll try to focus on the spirit instead," says Madsen, who has made regular visits to Yasgur's field for several years. "But if they preserve the land, I'll be going there every year for the rest of my life."
For more information about the efforts of the Woodstock Preservation Alliance, visit www.thewoodstockspirit.org.
Elizabeth Benjamin, a staff writer for the Times Union in Albany, is a frequent contributor to Preservation.
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