The Celebrate Gloucester concert, which had dozens of fans dancing in the aisles on the city's I-4, C-2 property and raised the spirits of around 1,000 people who took in the show the Sunday night of Labor Day weekend, raised some $15,000 for some local nonprofit organizations.
Peter Van Ness, who, with his wife Vickie, organized the event, said the check for the net proceeds was turned over to The Gloucester Fund, which will distribute the money.
Those dollars will be divided among local charities that have been nominated by residents and visitors, who can now vote to decide which organizations will reap the benefits.
The Gloucester Fund will award grants to the top three vote-getters among the 24 charities who have been nominated since Aug. 1, Van Ness said. Those looking to have input in deciding where the money goes can cast their votes at CelebrateGloucester.com.
Voting will continue through Sept. 30, with each of the three winners chosen by the online voters to receive $5,000, Van Ness said.
The model for allocating the money is based in large part on the formula used by BankGloucester in the distribution of its annual community grants. In that case, bank customers choose which organizations most deserve the bank's community awards, and bank employees then surprise the winners by delivering the checks unannounced.
In the case of the concert, The Gloucester Fund serves as the conduit from tallying the money from the concert to delivering it to the ultimate beneficiaries.
"We all saw how music brought people down to the property to party at the end of summer," said Gloucester Fund treasurer Brent "Ringo" Tarr. "It's a great use of the property, (and) letting the public decide how to spend the money we raised helps get people involved in making our city a better place to live."
The Celebrate Gloucester concert has been, to date, the biggest one-time event presented on the I-4, C-2 site, which the city acquired earlier this summer after it had sat derelict and vacant along Rogers Street and the Gloucester waterfront for more than 40 years.
Since Mayor Carolyn Kirk firmed up the purchase in June — and both city Department Public Works crews and a volunteer corps of residents cleaned up the property, it has found a niche as the home of the weekly Cape Ann Farmers Market, and as a municipal parking lot, most notably for St. Peter's Fiesta.
Kirk and the city's Community Development Department will be hosting a forum Tuesday night at City Hall to hear ideas for the property's long-term use.
Celebrate Gloucester featured seven hours of music headed by the sounds of national touring acts Roomful of Blues, Charles Neville and New Orleans jazzman Henri Smith, who has relocated to Gloucester in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It also showcased performances by locally-based musicians such as Allen Estes, Fly Amero, who joined Estes on stage, Inge Berge and his band, and the group KBMG, headed by Dan King and veteran guitarist David Brown.
The event was primarily sponsored by National Grid, with media sponsorship by the Gloucester Daily Times.
"We could not have raised this money without help from our sponsors led by National Grid," Van Ness said. "Celebrate Gloucester was truly a community event featuring local music, local sponsors, local food and a mostly local audience."
Van Ness said Celebrate Gloucester will also be releasing a feature length concert DVD sometime in October. A portion of the DVD sales will also be donated to the three winning charities, he said.
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