The Voices of America Country Music Fest opens Thursday with performances by Brad Paisley and Scotty McCreery. Organizers, first responders, and West Chester Township officials, however, are keeping their eyes on the weekend weather outlook.
The four-day music festival also featuring Rascal Flatts and Blake Shelton is expected to draw around 75,000 people to Voice of America MetroPark from Thursday through Sunday. The weather forecast looks good for Thursday, but the National Weather Service is predicting rain and thunderstorms on Friday, Friday night, and Saturday.
"With any large outdoor festival or event, severe weather and lightning is a concern," says Director of Public Information and Engagement Brianna Wooten. "It's a very open location, a very open venue, so we're working with our public safety professionals, the event organizers, the producer on site, as well as local Emergency Management Agency resources to provide early tracking and radar indications of any lightning strikes nearby, so that we have time to clear the space and tell people to seek shelter."
Wooten says there are two lightening strike detectors within 20 miles and around nine miles of the location that authorities will utilize to provide advance warning and, if needed, temporarily halt the event.
In that event, people will be instructed to "clear the area and seek shelter in their vehicles or elsewhere, so some people may have to leave the venue and come back, depending on whether they were using rideshare or some other kind of transportation," she says.
The ground at Voice of America saturates quickly, so Friday's rain is almost certain to turn the venue into a muddy mess. Concertgoers should be prepared to get dirty. On Wednesday, some standing water, wet ground and mud could already be seen on the the event grounds.
A new venue in 2027
This is the fourth and final year the annual music festival will be held at Voice of America. The township announced last week it would not renew its contract with Further Concepts and Investors, LLC, which puts on the event.
Wooten says the township notified the company of its decision in June so the organizers would have time find another location for 2027.
"The music festival is very popular. It's been a really well attended and enjoyable event for a lot of attendees for the years that it's been here. But every year it's grown and it's really just reached the capacity of the site and [is] really just too large for the current operations," she says.
Additionally, she says, the township determined the economic impact wasn't enough to offset public safety operation costs.
"We do pull hotel data," Wooten says. "We have partners that track that information, and overall occupancy rates have not changed since the festival started. The challenge with some of those occupancy rates is there's actually some pollution in the data from the [Cincinnati Open] tennis tournament that happens locally — which is a much larger regional draw — but if you look at the year prior to the festival being here, occupancy rates were the same or lower."
Wooten does say the township remains open to hosting other large-scale events in the future.
"We really do care about that larger draw for economic benefit, and the event's very popular, but it does have large operational and overhead costs for the township that have to be borne by taxpayers, and after further analysis — especially with how it's grown over the years — we felt that it was best that it went elsewhere for next year," she concludes.
Event organizers
Further Concepts and Investors CEO Tyler Wogenstahl has told media he's already chosen a new venue for 2027.
According to court records, Wogenstahl is being sued by Wright-Patt Credit Union for breach of contract. The credit union alleges Wogenstahl took out a $300,000 loan in 2024 and still owes $262,074.10. In a response, Wogenstahl's attorney requests the case be dismissed.
Records also show Wogenstahl was sued last year in Butler County for failure to pay a business for festival setup services. That case was voluntarily dismissed several weeks later.
Wooten tells reporters West Chester has received the first of two payments for the 2026 event. The second payment is due after the event. She also said an outstanding payment from last year's event was received earlier this year.
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