Nightclub Owner and Luke Campbell Discuss Partnering for Single Memorial Day Event 

“In this day and age you have to adapt to the times.”—Luther “Luke” Campbell, proposer of the Umoja Festival 

By Erik Bojnansky
Editor

A rapper turned record producer and the co-owner of a Washington Avenue club are now discussing joining forces to produce a single Memorial Day event.

Luther Campbell and Level partner Noah Lazes have both proposed separate special events on Ocean Drive during the Memorial Day three-day weekend. Both proposals have called for live music events – but only one plan can be approved, city officials say.

“We are discussing with Luke… a partnership,” Lazes said.

“We have had a conversation about working together,” Campbell said. “I hope to work with him. Noah is very successful at planning events and concerts and Gerry [Kelly, Lazes’s partner at Level] is good at promotions.”

However, Campbell added, he is also open to working with other club owners as well, such as the operators of Opium and Kenny Smith of crobar.

Last Friday, Campbell met with community activists and city administrators on his second annual Umoja festival, a process both Campbell and Beach officials hope will be finalized by the end of February.

Lazes said the city has also given him positive marks on his idea to produce the “largest dance and fashion festival” on Miami Beach which he proposed to the Nightlife Advisory Task Force last September in order to “diversify” Memorial Day Weekend.

But Maggie Fernandez, the city’s special events coordinator, said her office has not heard anything about Lazes’s proposed festival since September. “We left them a message… to find out if they were moving forward,” she said.

Also, according to city officials, the upcoming February 11 Nightlife Advisory Task Force meeting and February 27 Ocean Drive Special Event meeting will discuss Campbell’s proposal.

Marlo Courtney, president of the Ocean Drive Improvement Association, said his group is simply waiting to see what “the manager’s recommendation is going to be.”

Two years ago hip-hop events all over South Beach were promoted across the country during Memorial Day Weekend.  As a result as many as 200,000 people, many of them out of state fans of hip hop, flocked to SoBe.  When some of the events were oversold, many fans became irate and police arrested more than 200 people for disorderly conduct and other offenses.

In anticipation of another huge showing the city invested $1 million in extra police protection last year. The large hip-hop crowds returned without the disruptions, but many Miami Beach residents fled the anticipated Memorial Day mess. Many business owners, meanwhile, complained of a drop in revenue. When some members of the nightlife committee sought to examine ways of “diversifying” Memorial Day Weekend, Lazes proposed “the largest dance and fashion festival” on Miami Beach.  “The South Beach Dance and Fashion Festival on Miami Beach will feature more than 20 nightclubs and five outdoor venues,” the proposal stated. 

Some members of Miami-Dade County’s black community questioned whether or not the proposal was meant to shut out a predominately young, black crowd. Last October, City Manager Jorge Gonzalez publicly criticized the move. “Last year was successful, inviting and open to everyone,” Gonzalez said at the time. “When I read in the paper that the Beach in not tolerant, it pains me greatly.”

Campbell said his Umoja festival on Ocean Drive last year attracted a wide range of attendees. In his proposed expanded festival—which will include arts and crafts booths, food stands from local restaurants as well as fashion shows and star-caliber old school, new school and neo-soul acts—he’s confident the crowds will be of all backgrounds, ranging between the ages of 21 and 41.“It is not 90 percent of black people who are listening to urban and hip hop,” Campbell explains. “In this day and age you have to adapt to the times.” The festival will also be configured quaintly between the sand dunes and the coral wall. “It will be like a village,” he said.

But Lazes said the festival will likely be more successful if he and Campbell worked together. “We have a lot of the same ideas on how to do it,” he said. 

In the meantime, city officials are already starting to plan how to handle this year’s Memorial Day Weekend.  An administrative meeting on Memorial Day was held on Wednesday, said Nanette Rodriguez, media relations specialist, and so far the city is leaning against closing Ocean Drive to traffic this year.