The Woodstock 50th Anniversary festival has been denied a permit for another festival site. Woodstock 50 has faced a wide range of complications, from losing venues to dropping investors, and this is just the next obstacle for the event. The organizers of the event recently received the news that their permit for the event has been denied, with this being the second site that has now declined Woodstock 50. The new location was set to be in upstate New York, just outside the town of Utica. The venue had the capacity of around 45,000 guests, down from the capacity of 70,000 at their previous location. With the future of Woodstock 50 up in the air once again, the event is facing the task of finding a third venue to attempt to secure.

Originally announced at the start of this year, Woodstock 50 was meant to be a celebration of the 50th year anniversary of the original Woodstock festival. First confirmed by Michael Lang, the event originally was expecting to have around 100,000 guests. As time went on, however, a variety of complications started for the event’s coordinators. The first sign that something was wrong with the festival was when ticket sales were originally delayed in April, with some reporting that the festival was cancelled all together. As time went on, Lang accused one of the event’s investors of embezzling over 17 million dollars from the organization. An appeals court later decided in favor of the investor, the company Dentsu, and stated that they did not need to return the money to Woodstock 50. Despite this, the festival’s organizers insisted the festival would still commence as planned once they secured new investors.

Following this incident, however, Woodstock 50 lost the venue they had secured for later this fall. The festival was supposed to take place at Watkins Glen International speedway, but the organizers were not able to stick to their end of the arrangement. The Woodstock organizers owed the venue $150,000 in payment for the festival and had missed the deadline. In June, Watkins Glen filed a breach of contract against the organizers for missing their May 15 payment. After the dust settled, the event found itself without a venue, but with Lang and other still insisting it will take place. 

Now their attempts at securing a new location have hit a road bump. The venue was going to be Vernon Downs park in Utica, New York, but now Lang and the other organizers will have to search for a new event yet again. The application was denied due to a variety of issues that organizers had not fixed and the disorganization of the event as a whole. The Woodstock organizers will now have a short time frame to revise their application, but it is unknown if they will attempt again or simply look for a new location.