Downtown Las Vegas Becomes Beautified

*This is an excerpt from Rock Vegas*

Rehan Choudhry had left Cosmopolitan with no job, but he had an idea. He wanted to create a festival. Not just any festival, but a festival that would make a difference. He explains:?

“I wanted to create a festival that had a purpose. There are two iconic festivals in my mind: Woodstock and MLK’s, “I Have a Dream” speech. I say those are festivals because they both have multiple acts on stage; you had tickets, you had crowds, producers, the whole run. People think of festivals as just music, bands, and a field, but MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech, was as much of a festival as any. They both were representative of what was happening culturally and politically in the United States and to a degree globally. Those generations were demanding change.”

“In the last 15 years, festivals in this country?and globally are creating bigger experiences that give people the opportunity to party and forget. You’re going to party your ass off. But most people are walking out of festivals like Lollapalooza or Coachella thinking, ‘I think I had a good time. I don’t remember a thing. I blacked out halfway through it.’ Festivals are supposed to be points where people of common interests and perspectives come together to make a difference. I’m not suggesting you’re not supposed to drink and have a good time, but you’re supposed to walk out of it feeling like, ‘Okay, I’m carrying something with me into the rest of my life, but then I also contributed my perspective on something.’

Many people are dealing with social issues. It could be coming out, addiction, fear of failure, finding a career or finding love. The problem is they didn’t have access to people going through the same things. Choudhry said at the time, “There are 12-year-olds who are sick with cancer that think their world is going to end. I can tell them a story about me having a heart attack and show them my life today and show them that the four years that I spent in the hospital while I thought were life ending were not the end of the story.”

Choudhry’s idea was to create a platform that empowered people to share their stories of resilience with people who needed it. If you’re a kid who’s battling depression, you can come to Life is Beautiful (LIB) and meet people who successfully got through depression. For the 15-year-old that’s struggling to come out, they can attend and find out that there is a story line that leads to a good ending. So, the priority was to create a festival that mattered.

Choudhry also knew a thing or two about food and wine festivals but visited other festivals like Outside Lands in San Francisco or Coachella. He said, “Sometimes the best things you can learn from another event is that they aren’t all that! I got there and I knew for a fact they weren’t a foodie festival because I know the chefs. I know the people that go to food and wine festivals. Coachella claims they’re an arts festival; they do six statues and a couple paintings, and they claim to be an arts festival, but I know artists and art enthusiasts. They weren’t there.”

His focus for LIB was to create four focal points. Music, food, art, and learning.

If you were an arts fan and you wanted to hear good music, you also had an 80-band lineup. But if you just wanted to check out the art, you had an entire weekend of art. It is a true arts festival or at least it was.

When Choudhry pitched his idea, it could only be held one place: downtown. Enter Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com and future LIB investor. In 2009, Hsieh moved Zappos corporate headquarters from Henderson to downtown Las Vegas, purchasing and renovating a vacant City Hall. Just as with his other projects in the city, the end goal of LIB was to prop up the future site of Hsieh's company headquarters.

The footprint of producing an eighteen-square block festival downtown, had and still has its challenges.

The art piece would be unique. “For art we eliminated the red velvet rope, so you can touch, feel, be a part of and meet the people that were part of it (chefs),” said Choudhry. “We budded up the production of the artwork to the week of the festival, so for an entire week leading to the festival, anybody that wanted to walk downtown could see the art installations being created. At LIB, three days before the festival, you could walk around and meet D’Face, one of the most famous street artists on the planet right there painting.” Street art was introduced with no frames, in the entire gallery style exhibit. People define themselves by their Instagram photo, that photo they take in front of a select backdrop. That picture is more special if you learned something directly from the artist.

In year one, LIB included culinary demonstrations, tastings, dinners, and cooking lessons with 35 celebrity chefs. The speaker series rivaled TED Talks. There were presentations from the linguist for Game of Thrones, who was a hyper nerd, but loves languages. His career made them cool and relevant. Choudhry explains, “It doesn’t matter what you’re passionate about, all roads can lead to this sense of popular exciting, cutting-edge work.”

In the early days of the festival, Another Planet booked LIB’s music stages. Another Planet is a partnership with two of Bill Grahams disciples, who did not take the SFX or Clear Channel money at that time. The first-year headliner lineup were The Killers, Kings of Leon and Passion Pit. 21 Pilots was on a side stage, and no one knew who they were.

Choudhry continues, “LIB is an event that speaks to people at their passion points. The 15-year-old who is a hardcore music fan is not dissimilar from the 45-year-old who’s a hardcore foodie. They have the same passion. Now if you put them together in an environment that makes sense, that’s when cool stuff starts happening.

At some point during the day, you’re going to want to sit down in an air conditioned or shaded environment and just relax. LIB was designed to sit in talks, getting a glass of water, or a beer, in air conditioning for 15 minutes and getting some compelling information verses sitting under a tree or in a sponsored lounge.

Most festivals need 3-4-years to gain traction and break even. LIB was no exception. While it was critically acclaimed, it lost an estimated $10 million its first year. In 2011, LIB would shake up its management.

In 2003, Justin Weniger walked-on UNLV’s football team. He parlayed a couple of stunt man gigs into paying for college and started working crowd management for We Serve. In 2005, he created a business distributing flyers for the nightclubs. During the culmination of the nightclub promotion business, he launched SEVEN magazine and Wendoh Media. But SEVEN became more focused on UNLV, community, live music and downtown. “When we heard of everything going on downtown. We wanted to get involved, not to (just) get a part of the $350 million (economic impact). Tony Hsieh was making big investments, but we wanted to make our own.” said Weniger. With partners like Pasquale Rotella, Weniger opened a restaurant/bar, Commonwealth (common good of community).

Hsieh funded LIB and Weniger became more involved. Wendoh Media’s role was local marketing. Hsieh was committed to a second year but was looking for a solution for the heavy loss. Andrew Donner, who had done a lot of real estate deals with Hsieh, played a bigger role in the second year. Weniger was invited to a “co-working” exercise in Hawaii with Hsieh, Donner and the Zappos team. Weniger simply said, “I proposed several ideas to boost attendance. Later at dinner, Tony asked me to run LIB.”

Weniger continued: “Without an intimate knowledge of the numbers, I started looking at how other festivals worked. One I looked at was South by Southwest in Austin, which developed over thirty years ago. Austin has a great live music scene and a cool restaurant brand. Tony wasn't investing in LIB to make a bunch of money. The core value was how to do something special for downtown that helps create conversation everywhere.”

Weniger did not take the job, but his company Wendoh Media did a lot of the promotion. He thoroughly evaluated LIB II and then spent the next three months developing a plan. Although LIB went to three nights in year two and attendance grew to more than 130,000 up from 87,000 in year one, there was still a big loss. At LIB II, Weniger would have an epiphany.

“When Imagine Dragons went on Saturday night, I sat in the middle of it and looked around. This is it; it's hit and it's the tipping point. It was the top two most emotional sets I've ever seen. Dan Reynolds (lead Singer) is in his hometown reliving his youth, in front of everybody and crying, but completely in a state of flow. They have a song called,?“We Are the Warriors” it's very melodic and he plays an acapella version of it. He is crying. ‘We are the warriors that built this town’ and then they play “Welcome to the New Age.”?The place is going nuts and I have a tear in my eye. This is the new age of Las Vegas. With a million people telling me there's no way that LIB makes sense. In my gut, it means more than we think it does.”

However, going into year three, its future was still in question.

In another brainstorm session, there were more questions. What's the long-term vision? Why do we do this? Why do you go to this festival??What's the plan to support it? The answer: Move forward. LIB launches a new logo. They move the dates to September where hotel occupancy is lower, and fans get better room rates. “It's almost like a year one festival. We waited too long in year two to announce and go on sale.?In year three, LIB sold out the presale in thirty minutes. When we announced the lineup, we were up forty five percent and getting better feedback on our social channels.”?says Weniger.

The musical lineup was diverse and balanced. “We invested more in the two, three and four acts each night,” says Weniger. Over the three days, Mumford and Sons, and J. Cole headlined with support from G-Easy, Empire of the Sun, and the Lumineers. Overall LIB drew more than 146,000 which helped cut its losses but had not turn the corner yet.

LIB IV was already announced. “This was the first year, before the festival happened, that next year’s festival was happening,” says Weniger. “Bands want to play this festival.”

“There is not a single brand, let alone a festival, today that will survive with even the slightest hint of inauthenticity. The festivals that are left standing, that continue to grow – are authentic, transparent with messages and purpose. What I love about our festival, and what continues to grow our festival, is the way people from each of our pillars – from street art to culinary to music and the inspiration series – and most importantly the extended Life is Beautiful community (fans) – are all equally inspired by one and other. We do this because we are passionate about each of its components and the opportunity, the platform, to inspire and impact.” says Weniger.

In 2019, LIB was one of the highest grossing festivals in the world ($17.7M). Since its inception, the festival has hosted more than 1 million fans and 600-plus artists. For last year’s three-day festival, which featured headliners Billie Eilish, Green Day and Tame Impala, 170,000+ attended, marking one of the highest grossing festivals that year.

Recently, Rolling Stone acquired a majority interest in the music, art and idea festival. “I am grateful to have worked with Tony on this partnership and am proud to have Rolling Stone help carry forward his mission,” said Jann Simon Wenner, creator and publisher of Rolling Stone. Rolling Stone has plans to broaden the festival’s digital footprint and expand it into new territories while continuing to highlight musicians and artists and offer exposure to new cultural experiences.

This year’s festival takes place September 16 - 18. Headlining are Arctic Monkey, Calvin Harris, Gorillaz and many more.