Plans for a revamped Millennium Park are hitting a sour note with the founder and organizer of a local music festival, but the area councillor said the design isn’t finished.

Cindy McLeod, with the Calgary International Blues Festival, which has taken place at Millennium Park for more than a decade, said she’s uncertain how to proceed with their event, held at the end of July, because there are few details on how changes to the park may proceed.

That’s due to work expected to take place this spring to accommodate the Cowboys Music Festival tent. The newly-named Cowboys Park was part of a 10-year sponsorship agreement between the City of Calgary and Penny Lane Entertainment.

McLeod said preliminary designs that have been circulated show as much as 70 per cent of the softer grass surface will be replaced with a hard top, more suitable for a tented structure. There are no electrical plans, no water plans and that makes it difficult to plan their event, McLeod said.

McLeod did try to learn more about the project by putting in a Freedom of Information and Privacy request, but that was going to cost her $2,600.

“It’s really, really, really hard to determine what I can even do. I’ve been losing sleep over this. Every night, I’m lying there trying to imagine, ‘Oh my God, where am I going to put this? Where am I going to put that?” McLeod told LiveWire Calgary.

“We’ve been tweaking that site for 14 years.”

It’s difficult for McLeod to find another spot with only a few months remaining. There are too few festival sites like Millenium Park that are available. Plus, there’s very little time to plan.

That might have been avoided had stakeholders like her been involved in the process. She said that she hasn’t been a part of any engagement on the site.

“I think that if anybody was approached, they weren’t told the whole story,” McLeod said.

Designs aren’t finalized: City of Calgary

In response to a series of questions on the project, the cost and the design, the City of Calgary’s Parks and Open Spaces team sent back a short, emailed response.

“More details on this plan will be available at the end of the month. These plans were shared with partners in advance as a courtesy,” the message read.

Ward 7 Coun. Terry Wong acknowledged that not every stakeholder was approached. This was due to the timeline of the sponsorship deal and the desire to finalize the design to begin work on the site. The Millennium Park location has to be ready to go by sometime in late May or early June to accommodate the tent set up to be ready for the 2025 Calgary Stampede.

“There’s no doubt that certain stakeholders were not included in a consultation, or some were, and some got different bits of information,” Wong said.

“So, it’s not a typical process. The typical would have been an engagement.”

He said once the designs are made public, likely within the next couple of weeks, then city parks staff will work with other park users to see how the area can be used for their events.

Wong said that Penny Lane is on the hook for costs to upgrade the site to meet their specs, while the City of Calgary is paying for previously identified lifecycle costs on the park site. Those figures haven’t yet been released.

McLeod said she thinks the way the whole thing has been handled lacks the type of transparency citizens should expect from their municipal government. While her event may suffer, she said there are larger issues at play.

“To me, this is just wrong as a citizen, and as a taxpayer and as an event presenter,” she said.

“It’s just wrong on every level in my view.”

More information on the site can be found on the city’s Cowboys Park page.