Ultra Music Festival: 'Miami, We're Coming Home'

MIAMI, FL — After months of uncertainty, Miami city commissioners narrowly approved a new agreement that will allow Ultra Music Festival to bring its thumping beat back to Bayfront Park in March 2020 despite a cacophony of resident complaints.

The 3-2 vote on Thursday night will add $2 million to city coffers each year and assure that one of the world's best known electronic music festivals will remain in the Magic City.

"Miami, We're coming home," proclaimed Ultra on Twitter following the vote.

While city officials love the money, glamour and prestige of the annual event, many residents hate the noise, traffic and certain proclivities of the young, well-heeled audience of about 165-170,000 people who attend every March.

See also:

• Ultra Pulls Out Of Miami Amid Chorus Of Complaints
• Ultra May Return To Bayfront Park
• Ultra Won't Thump In Miami Beach, But Maybe Homestead, Miami

The new agreement appears to address some of those concerns while offering Ultra organizers compromises to reconsider their May decision to unplug the festival from Miami and look for a new home.

Miami attorney David Winker, who filed a lawsuit against the city on behalf of the Brickell Homeowners Association to block last year's move of the festival from downtown Miami to Virginia Key, said the new agreement does not affect his case.

"Our litigation continues on the grounds that the license agreement is actually a lease and therefore requires competitive bidding under the charter," he told Patch.

Winker has said that the fundamental concerns of downtown residents with respect to noise and congestion are not going to go away.

"The city has shown year after year that it is unable to address resident concerns about Ultra," he said earlier. "The bottom line is we're going to monitor what happens here."

He said the city changed its voting procedures ahead of the vote to allow the agreement to pass by a simple majority of only three of the five commissioners.

"They didn't have the four votes that has always been required to approve a 'license agreement' in the past," Winker said.