Ultra Music Festival's Agreement With Miami Headed To Court

MIAMI, FL -- With two weeks to go before tens of thousands of electronic music fans from all over the world descend on South Florida for this year's Ultra Music Festival, a Miami judge has agreed to hear a court challenge that would essentially block the festival from being held at its new location in Virginia Key until city officials comply with a number of additional requirements concerning competitive bidding and public participation.

Judge Rodolfo A. Ruiz will consider the emergency motion for a temporary injunction at 2 p.m. Friday in Miami.

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The hearing is in response to a lawsuit filed by the Brickell Homeowners Association against the city of Miami last week seeking to block Ultra Music Festival from moving to Virginia Key from downtown Miami under the terms of a license agreement with the city.

Spokesman John Heffernan with the city of Miami told Patch that Ultra representatives began getting the site ready for the event on Monday.

"Ultra was able to access the site and has begun preliminary work, such as fencing.," he said, adding that city officials do not have a contingency plan for an alternate location.

According to court documents, more than 165,000 people are expected to attend the three-day festival on March 29, 30 and 31.

"Virginia Key is an utterly inappropriate venue for Ultra," explained attorney David Winker, who filed the action on behalf of the association and Miami resident Christopher B. Mullin.

"The city of Miami circumvented its own laws and disenfranchised its own citizens to force this deal through, a deal that is a disaster for the environment and our residents," Winker said when the lawsuit was filed.

The lawsuit seeks to have the court declare the 33-page license agreement between the city and Ultra invalid.

"Plaintiffs are requesting the court to enter a temporary prohibitory injunction enjoining the City of Miami from utilizing the license agreement in its present form to make Virginia Key available to Ultra," court documents stated. "Plaintiffs do not ask for this extraordinary equitable remedy lightly, but are compelled to do so to preserve the status quo because the license agreement is so clearly a lease and not a license under established Florida law."

Ultra officials did not immediately respond to Patch's request for comment on Friday's hearing.

After hearing from a chorus of unhappy residents in late September, the Miami City Commission unanimously rejected an extension of Ultra Music Festival's agreement that allowed the festival to be held at Bayfront Park in downtown Miami each year.

But city officials later approved a plan to move the festival to Virginia Key over the objections of Key Biscayne's newly elected mayor, Mike Davey, whose affluent community is located nearby off Rickenbacker Causeway.

With only one road in and one road out of Key Biscayne, the locals will have to navigate Ultra traffic to get to their homes. Village officials estimate that the event will draw four times as many people as the Miami Open tennis tournament, which is moving from Key Biscayne to Hard Rock Stadium this month.