Here’s what’s new @ the Osheaga site

Osheaga 2012

We freaked out a little last year when we realized that Osheaga had essentially torn Île Ste-Hélène a new one and erected a third main stage, accessible via a temporary overpass above an actual road. We made jokes about how future expansion would force us to ride La Ronde’s wondrous wooden roller-coaster, the Monster, to yet another new show zone. And will the neighbouring Île Notre-Dame get messy with festival stages one of these years? You never know.

So in the interest of preparing 42,500 festival-goers for what we’re about to experience together, we called up Evenko’s concerts and events VP Nick Farkas last week to ask what’s new with the site for Osheaga 2013.

“We always look at what works and what doesn’t work, what people complain about and what we feel is lacking,” Farkas says. “So we added an extra bridge to get over to the other two stages—there were four lanes; now we’re up to six.

“We’ve got a new 360-visual projection dome that can hold a couple hundred people—we’ve got some cool stuff lined up for that. We looked at more water fountains, more places for people to get wet, more places for people to get out of the sun, more food, more food trucks, more beer. Art World is bigger, and it’s got more cool stuff.

“Basically, there’s more of everything, including more people—we added 2,500 tickets this year. We cleared out the black fence that stopped you from entering the Green stage from the rest of the site. We changed the position of both the Green and Tree stages to accommodate more people and make it more comfortable.”

As for the future, Farkas emphasizes that ease and comfort will never be forfeited in favour of the “wow” factor, yet he’s not ruling out the possibility of further expansion.
“I think we’re using as much of the island as we can at the moment, but you never know—there could be creative ways to build on it.” ■