Ultra Music Festival is seeking a 5-year renewable NO BID contract with the City of Miami to host its annual music festival on Virginia Key. Virginia Key is a natural treasure filled with native wildlife and forest. There is no other place like it in Miami.

Hosting Ultra on Virginia Key will cause serious impact to the ground, leave garbage on our shores and in our waterways, harm wildlife, and block access to residents and visitors who regularly use this island park. Thousands of cyclists, mountain bikers, runners, triathletes, swimmers, dragon boaters, rowers, paddle boarders and kayakers use this island each week. Recreational boaters and fishermen, athletes and artists, all use and share Virginia Key.

Ultra seeks to take place at Miami Marine Stadium and at the Historic Virginia Key Beach Park. The Marine Stadium concert area is adjacent to the Sadowski Critical Wildlife Area. The Sadowski CWA is an area so sensitive that not even paddleboards or kayaks are not permitted entry. Yet it is expected to sustain the impact of one of the largest music festivals in the world. The Historic Virginia Key Beach site is a historic beachside park adjacent to a coastal hammock and mangrove forest. It is the historic black beach in Miami, a place to be preserved and respected.

Ultra Music Festival reported approximately 167,000 concert goers in 2017, over 3-days, That’s an average of 55,666 concert attendees per day. Virginia Key also hosts the Miami International Boat Show at the Miami Marine Stadium location only. In 2018 the boat show reported attendance of approximately 97,000 visitors over 5-day. That’s an average of 19,400 visitors per day.

Permitting an event of this magnitude is out of scale for this location. Taxpayers and visitors will inevitably be denied access to these publicly funded parks. Ancillary use will be diminished as visitors are redirected by not only the event but the disruption to parks and park grounds and services an event of this scale will bring.

Virginia Key cannot sustain such impact. Miami cannot sustain this impact.

Keep Ultra Music Festival off Virginia Key.