Yesterday, word got around that the organizers of the indie music festival All Tomorrow's Parties have decided to move their three-day rock concert from the Kutshers resort in Monticello to a new venue on the Jersey Shore.
The festival's organizers tried to pin the blame for the move on Kutshers, telling the New York Times on Tuesday that the old resort had become too decrepit to host them.
But today, Adam Bosch of the Times Herald-Record published a leaked email sent from an ATP official to Kutshers that shows there was another reason for the festival to abandon the Catskills for Jersey. Apparently, ATP is in about a million dollars of debt, some of it owed to Kutshers itself:
Higgins' husband, Barry Hogan, told Kutsher's brass that ATP was leaving because it lost roughly $1 million over the past three years and still owed money to Kutsher's and the nearby Raleigh Hotel. "It's no reflection on you, as we loved working with you but we lost nearly a million dollars over the 3 years in Monticello and it's going to take us a long time to pay back," Hogan's e-mail said.
Apparently, ATP organizers rethought that whole "it's no reflection on you" thing when they talked to the NYT.
Bosch also got Yossi Zablocki, who runs Kutshers, to talk to him about ATP's decision to depart. According to Zablocki, ATP was run in a money-losing fashion, and now it's paying for it:
"They're not leaving because of the condition of the hotel," he said. "It's their business model. They probably had to sell all 3,000 of those tickets to pay their bills."
Earlier: All Tomorrow's Parties abandons Kutshers for New Jersey
