Rehoboth Beach will experiment next year with new days for some of its summer bandstand concerts.
The discussion took up well over an hour, with public input for business owners and exchanges between commissioners that saw one compare the city manager to China’s Chairman Mao and another call a colleague “obnoxious.”
At a meeting earlier this month, some business owners contended the concerts - held during the summer on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays - are actually hurting their businesses, as concertgoers take up space on the sidewalk and block access to shops and restaurants. One of those business owners is Tom Ibach, who owns Dolle’s.
“When we get hit with the concert on those particular nights, we lose roughly half of our business on a Friday or Saturday or Sunday," he told commissioners. "Half of the business.”
Alison Blyth owns Go Fish, located nearly next door to the bandstand.
“It's everything to us," she said. "If you guys lived on a cul-de-sac and you couldn't get to your houses three days a week all summer long. You couldn't get your mail, you couldn't get this, you couldn't get that, you couldn't pay your bills. How does that feel? That's what it's like for us down there.”
There seemed to be support for moving one of the weekend concerts to Wednesday night. Commissioner Suzanne Goode sided with the business owners who spoke.
“This is drawing in more people when we don't particularly need to draw in more people. The town is full," she said.
Commissioners voted 6-1 to do a trial run in 2026 of moving some concerts to Wednesdays, as well as some other recommendations made by staff. Goode voted against, saying the proposal wasn’t specific enough.
