‘A glimmer of hope’ remains for Monsters of Rock, but so does COVID-19 uncertainty

Plans for a Monsters of Rock reunion concert this summer at Albi Stadium are still alive, but barely.

“There’s still a glimmer of hope,” Justin Kobluk, President of West Coast Entertainment, said Wednesday.

However, the shadow of COVID-19 still hangs over those plans.

The concert needs a big crowd – at least 25,000 per day for a two-day event – and it’s unclear whether regulations will allow that many people at Albi, even in late August.

That uncertainty makes it difficult to get a commitment from artists.

“I’m numb from how many concerts I’ve had to cancel already,” said Kobluk, who recently was forced into a second postponement of the Jersey Boys show at the First Interstate Center for the Arts.

Originally scheduled for the spring of 2020, Jersey Boys was pushed back to 2021. Now it’s set for 2022.

“This thing has gone on longer than anyone had anticipated,” Kobluk said.

In fact, the Monsters of Rock concert would already be canceled were it not for the new proposal for a downtown stadium.

Current plans by Spokane Public Schools, the owners of the Albi site, call for demolition to begin this spring. Should Monsters of Rock be held, organizers are willing to pay up for $500,000 for the resulting delays in demolition and construction.

However, should the district opt to go with the downtown site, those delays would be moot, as there would be no construction at Albi.

Having set a drop-dead date of mid-March for a final decision on the concert, Kobluk said Wednesday that “I was completely ready to walk away.”

“But there’s still a glimmer of hope,” Kobluk said.

The concert proposal is the second in as many years.

The school board approved the Monsters of Rock concert almost exactly a year ago. But like almost every other public event, it was wiped out by the pandemic and quietly shelved.

If everything gels, a concert could still happen in late August, sending the 70-year-old stadium out in style and bringing back some memories from 1988.

That’s when the epic Monsters of Rock tour came to Spokane and treated more than 30,000 music lovers to the likes of Van Halen, Scorpions, Dokken and an up-and-coming band called Metallica.