This Saturday’s Jazz Festival Gets City Permit Yanked, Promoter Appeals To Commission
Written by 991KBU on July 27, 2022
CORRECTION: This story has been corrected to reflect that the concert was scheduled for Sunday. It was scheduled for Saturday.
The City of Malibu has revoked the temporary use permit for the Sunset Jazz Festival … scheduled for this Saturday on a city-owned vacant lot.
The city says the concert organizers lied on their application … that they applied for their temporary use permit with a state liquor sales permit that had been fraudulently obtained.
The applicant is a music producer named Hudson Baxter.
He’s appealed the cancelled temporary use permit to the Malibu Planning Commission … which will meet in special session tomorrow (Thursday) morning.
Baxter had rented the “chili cook-off site” from the city … it’s the large vacant lot on Civic Center Way in the heart of the city.
The Sunset Jazz Group has sold tickets … maybe several thousand tickets … starting at 70 dollars a head.
Some tickets were being sold for 266 dollars per person … for VIP tables and two bottles of wine.
Headliners for the concert are smooth jazz artists Najee … Freda Payne … and Will Downing.
But only if it comes off.
City planning director Richard Mollica says the concert organizer said he had obtained the special liquor sales license when he applied for the temporary use permit.
Mollica says that was fraud.
The liquor license … he says … had actually been issued to a different entity and at a different address … and had been altered with the wrong type face.
Mollica says that was a fraud .. and as a result … the Temporary Use Permit is revoked.
The applicant says the liquor license was obtained by a vendor … and was not prepared by him …
And he’s willing to drop liquor sales at the jazz fest.
Not good enough … says Mollica …
In a memo to the Planning Commission … Mollica says “the submittal of an invalid (liquor) license constitutes obtaining the temporary use permit in a fraudulent manner.”
And “without a valid license, the appellant cannot fulfill one or more conditions of the temporary use permit.”
Baxter’s lawyer says the jazz promoter has already sold more than 2,000 tickets for the Sunday jazz concert. “Mr. Baxter has incurred substantial financial obligations that will cause him severe damage if the event is cancelled.”
Mollica says tough. “Fraudulent information was submitted to City and that information has been confirmed to be fraudulent by the appropriate regulatory agency. The financial obligations of the appellant are not grounds to overlook that one or more of the required conditions of approval could not be fulfilled for TUP No. 22-021.”
The Planning Commission will hear the Jazz Festival appeal at 10 Thursday morning.
