VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) — The second weekend of October will be a big one on the Virginia Beach Oceanfront for Pharrell and “Phriends” — and tens of thousands of fans — as the Something in the Water festival will take place Oct. 12-13.
Multiple sources not authorized to speak publicly had previously confirmed the dates for this year’s Something in the Water Festival, as WAVY News learned the Virginia Beach Hotel Association notified its members that Pharrell Williams’ SITW will be held that weekend.
On the Something in the Water website, it announced the festival as coming soon in October 2024, and then provided a way to get a text message announcing the festival dates.
The message reads:
“Something is coming to Virginia Beach, VA on October 12th & 13th! Stay tuned for more announcements!”
Many colleges in the Commonwealth, including NSU, Hampton University, ODU, UVA, Virginia Tech and VCU have their fall breaks scheduled during the weekend planned for SITW.
Pharrell’s new Lego movie, the biopic Piece by Piece, is scheduled to premier Oct. 11. It features everyone from Kendrick Lamar and Snoop Dogg, to Gwen Stefani and Timbaland. Movie production on the early life of Pharrell is also underway.
An email to Virginia Beach City Council sent Wednesday noted the hotel association’s email announcing the festival dates, which the city understood would be formally announced Thursday by Something in the Water representatives.
Late last year, Nancy Helman, director of the city’s Convention and Visitors Bureau, in a presentation to council, showed it a slide listing “SITW October 2024” as part of a presentation about two new festivals coming to Virginia Beach in 2024.
She showed council a map that identified the locations of the two new events plus SITW.
The map identified the Something in the Water Festival taking place from 3rd to 14th streets on the sand, and again at 20th Street.
At that time, a city spokesperson confirmed that her slide deck did identify SITW taking place in October 2024, but would not confirm the accuracy of what it said, and noted that the festival would make an announcement about the confirmed dates.
Pharrell, who was born and raised in Virginia Beach, said he was looking forward to the festival moving from its traditional April dates after inclement weather led to delays and cancelations in both 2019 and 2023.
Last year, SITW had to cancel its Sunday performance schedule, and on the Friday of the festival, there was a five-hour weather delay. Only the second day of the festival went off without weather-related issues.
Resort owners had pushed back on the date shift for the festival, saying moving it to a different date would defeat the purpose of its creation.
Meanwhile, some business owners on the Oceanfront, such as Coastal Edge owner D. Nachnani, are excited about the change in date.
“When we heard it was moving to October and not during Memorial Day or June, we were elated because it helps us as local businesses to extend our season,” Nachnani said. “Bringing one of our own, Pharrell Williams, back home to us and celebrating our local talent and international talent is very rewarding.”
However, the late-April slot previously held by Pharrell’s Something in the Water Festival was given to Audacy for its slate of Oceanfront concerts, which offered a mix of local and national artists performing. Its concerts took place from April 26-28, and had much smaller crowds than showed up for SITW.
And though festivals such as Something in the Water, Jackalope and Beach It! made an overall positive economic impact on Virginia Beach, a review of the city’s sponsorship agreement of SITW and Beach It! by the city auditor’s office found the city would not receive the money council had initially set aside for them.
Council in 2022 agreed to set aside $2 million to help support SITW in 2023 and give $500,000 upfront to the festival to help pay for marketing costs, with the city’s sponsorship allowing organizers to keep more of their revenue than they did for the inaugural festival while allowing for the free use of city property and staff. That revenue included all admissions, meals and the local portion of state sales taxes.
However, after the auditor’s review, the total amount the festival made in those taxes was less than half the $2 million, as it collected just over $970,000 for what was billed as a three-day run. Inclement weather, though, allowed for just a day-and-a-half, and the festival refunded a third of the festival ticket price.
SITW still had a positive economic impact, according to Dr. Vincent Magnini, the executive director of the Institute for Service Research. He was hired by the city to analyze the festival’s performance and that of seven other events held at the Oceanfront.
Magnini determined the festival had an overall economic impact of at least $26 million, with at least 12,600 hotel stays and the city seeing between $1.04 and $1.06 spent for every dollar it invested.
Last year’s SITW, besides Pharrell, featured artists such as Babyface Ray, Mumford and Sons, Jazmine Sullivan, Kid Cudi, Busta Rhymes, Latto, a surprise guest in Diddy, Summer Walker, the Jonas Brothers, Machine Gun Kelly as well as Chris Brown. There were also younger female artists such as Lola Brooke and Coi Leray, as well as ASAP Rocky, M.I.A. and De La Soul.