Folk Festival Has Eyes on Permanent Home

When Mike Conrad decided that his fledgling Black Mountain Music Festival needed a permanent home, he looked to his own back yard--the arid hills surrounding this North County suburb.

By next summer he hopes to establish a $2-million outdoor amphitheater on Black Mountain in the Los Penasquitos Canyon Preserve, about 15 miles north of downtown San Diego. It would be the largest outdoor entertainment venue in inland North County.

Conrad, president of the Ranchos Penasquitos Town Council, is working with San Diego City Councilwoman Abbe Wolfsheimer to raise donations for the stage and park.

The theater would seat 5,000 and establish a site for the festival, which opened its second season one recent Sunday afternoon in Canyonside Park outside Penasquitos. About 850 people attended the folk concert and family picnic. It featured local folk-singing favorite Sam Hinton, nationally renowned children’s songwriter Peter Alsop, and Conrad’s own Black Mountain Sampler, a continuing story he tells about the mythic community of Black Mountain.

The remaining concerts are scheduled for July 2 and July 23.

Last year, the festival attracted 4,000 concert-goers during two performances, one in July and one in August. Conrad, a biochemist, originated the festival to preserve folk music and offer North County residents live entertainment without the drive to San Diego.

“I think there’s a very, very large music- and arts-hungry crowd in North City,” he said.

The amphitheater would be built around a natural bowl in the 500-acre Black Mountain Open Space Park. It lies within Los Penasquitos Canyon Preserve and abuts the as-yet undeveloped La Jolla River Valley.

The theater site is about 1,000 feet up the side of the steep, 1,600-foot mountain. It offers a 360-degree view of Rancho Santa Fe and the Pacific Ocean to the west and the hills of inland North County to the east. An avid environmentalist, Conrad wants to maintain the site’s natural beauty by contouring the theater to the hillside and landscaping with native plants and stones.

“What we want most of all is for it to blend into the land,” he said.

The city’s plan for Black Mountain Open Park doesn’t call for development until 2010. But Conrad, his Penasquitos neighbors and Wolfsheimer see no reason to wait if they can raise the money.

“Since Mike’s already got his music festival there, we said ‘Let’s get the money together now,’ ” explained Wolfsheimer aide Linda Bernhardt.

Once funds are in the bank, the group could form a nonprofit foundation run by a board of directors, similar to the San Diego Zoo and Wild Animal Park.

Conrad has spent the past two years planning the amphitheater-park complex, but felt it was important to establish the festival first.

“People need time to get used to the idea that there are going to be regular, live performances in North City,” he said.

The next concert, Starlight on the Rails, will feature a light show, square dance and contemporary folk music from The New Expression and Vocal Motion, a barbershop quartet. The season finale, Bluegrass on Black Mountain, is set for Saturday evening, July 23, featuring Berline, Crary and Hickman, and The Phil Salazar Band.

Both shows begin at 6:30 p.m. in Canyonside Park, near Rancho Penasquitos on Black Mountain Road. Tickets are $5 for adults, $3 for children 3 and over.