After regularly drawing more than 30,000 people to Centennial Olympic Park each spring, the SweetWater 420 Fest is scaling back and moving to the brewery property – apparently over the issue of restricting guns.
While SweetWater didn’t implicitly state guns were the reason, Atlanta City Council President Doug Shipman did in a statement released on Thursday.
“This festival attracts more than 30,000 people over several days. Reducing the size of the venue and the number of days of the festival is a huge economic loss for our city. We can secure stadiums and private venues and we should do the same for music festivals on public grounds when ticketed. We have an opportunity and obligation to make Georgia the number one place for tourism and music. I am hopeful we can find a solution to allow festivals to safely occur on public property with our state leadership and I will continue to work with Mayor Dickens and the City Council to explore local solutions that may restore our ability to be a music destination,” Shipman said.
SweetWater 420 said in a statement that “several factors played into this decision” to move the festival with “the most important being the safety of our festival goers.”
This year’s festival is set for April 22-23 at the SweetWater Brewery at 195 Ottley Drive. The headliners will be Shakey Graves and Pigeons Playing Ping Pong. Tickets are available here.
This isn’t the first music festival that made a radical decision over not being able to regulate firearms at its public venue. Music Midtown canceled its 2022 festival in Piedmont Park after challenges were made by gun rights activists.
The Georgia General Assembly passed legislation in 2014 that allows firearms in public parks, followed by a 2019 Georgia Supreme Court ruling which made it more difficult for private groups to restrict guns from events held on public property like Centennial Olympic Park and Piedmont Park.