Columbia Meadows a no-show

Lowell MacGregor Group nixes plans for summer concerts at Columbia Meadows

By Darryl Swan

The South County Spotlight, Jul 22, 2009, Updated Oct 30, 2009

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Pitfalls in the economy and the high price of star power have scuttled concert plans for Columbia Meadows this summer, said concert promoter Lowell MacGregor.

“It’s not going to happen this year. The economy is just too tough,” said MacGregor, president of Lowell MacGregor Group Concerts LLC. “It’s a bad, bad time to be trying to do stuff.”

Columbia Meadows, located on land owned by Morse Bros. mining near Deer Island, has been a mainstay venue for touring national acts, and has been the staple arena for big Portland radio promotion events such as RockFest and CountryFest.

But those big-ticket names come with big-ticket prices, and big risk.

“There’s only a handful of big artists out there and they’re so expensive there’s a lot of risk as to whether it’s going to work,” MacGregor said.

The absence of Columbia Meadows is a financial blow to the Columbia County Fair, which in prior years had received a percentage of concert ticket sales in the neighborhood of $30,000 annually.

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