It will be greener still at Concerts on the Green at Kate Sessions Park this summer, as the free Pacific Beach Town Council-sponsored annual event is planning to add more concerts and possibly a shuttle service.

“We are going to have six concerts up from four last year and they will all still be in July and August,” said Marcella Bothwell, immediate past PBTC president who has chaired the concerts event series since 2017. “We are going to have kid’s activities. We are also hoping to have a shuttle from the new Balboa Avenue Trolley stop.”

In 2022, family-friendly Concerts on the Green was held Sunday afternoons on four consecutive weekends July 24-Aug. 14. The updated contemporary musical series at the park on Soledad Road last year saw an expansion and improvements. One of those was moving the concert stage from the top of the park down to the base of the hill so that the entire hill could be used as a natural amphitheater.

“We will have the stage where we put it last year,” Bothwell said noting that, however, presents complications. “The problem with putting the stage down at the bottom of the hill is it requires a much more stable and complex stage than we had before, doubling the cost. And everything (cost) is up about 10% or 15%.”

Bothwell said Concerts on the Green is going where no PBTC-sponsored concert event has gone before. “We are taking it to the next level,” she said pointing out, until now, that the event has always been intended to “just break even. But now we’d like this to be our main fundraiser for the town council. We’d like to make some money for the community. That’s the goal. And all the money that we make from the concerts will go into community projects.”

PBTC applied for and was awarded a $5,000 City of San Diego Commission for Arts & Culture grant for nonprofits, which will help defray expenses for staging this year’s summer concert series.

“The stage was moved in 2022 to the bottom of the amphitheater hillside capturing a much larger area for concert-goers thus doubling our attendance to about 2,000 per concert,” stated PBTC’s City grant application. “With this momentum, we have collaborated with the Mission Hills concert series for promotions and advertising for their Friday and our Sunday concerts. We are excited to promote whole weekends of summer entertainment.

“With the opening of the Balboa trolley station, we are engaging a service for shuttle pickup at available parking lots distant from the park and at the trolley station,” continued the PBTC grant application. “Promotions for concertgoers will include the trolley convenience to encourage those interested south of the I-8, or in the eastern portion of the City, to venture to Pacific Beach. Promotions to SDSU, USD, and UCSD students who are now also all connected via the trolley will be done.”

The PBTC grant application added plans being made to engage kids and adults in a kids activity zone and a vendor area with an emphasis on visual arts.

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Cassie B Project

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PleaZure/Paradygm

Radiant Wave