By Larry Nager
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Concert producer Joe Santangelo will stage his annual music festival in a new baseball stadium this summer, but it won't be Great American Ball Park.

The "JazzFest'' is moving to Detroit's Comerica Park.

Citing the ongoing downtown entertainment boycott, Santangelo - whose family has produced the local JazzFest since 1962 - said Thursday that he has canceled plans for the July 25-26 Cincinnati event.

In 2002, facing boycott-related artist cancellations and a shrinking audience, Santangelo canceled the two-day show - the area's largest, longest-running annual concert - for the first time in its 40-year run. The problems began in 2001, when the festival was held a few months after the riots and lost $550,000."I'm moving it to Detroit," Santangelo said. "I can't get a sponsor. I've got two competing beer companies interested, but how can I say to them, `I want you to sponsor this event,' when I don't know what's going to happen?"

The move is another blow to the ailing downtown economy that has already lost more than $10 million because of the 18-month-old boycott. The festival had a $5 million impact, according to a 2000 report by the University of Cincinnati.

Much of that was felt by small businesses - beauty parlors, retail stores and restaurants.

"We're losing our black businesses," said restaurateur Paul "Mr. Pig" Sebron.

For the owner of Stenger's CafÈ and two Mr. Pig barbecue outlets, the loss of the festival is serious. In 2001, he cooked for performers, backup musicians and stage crews and catered private parties. The increased business totaled $6,000; he hired five additional employees to handle the extra work.

Now he struggles to keep his businesses open, and the stress has taken a toll. Sebron spoke from a hospital bed after undergoing a triple bypass. "They say that people get hurt in a revolution," he said. "But who decides that it's you who has to stand up against the wall?"

"This is part of what an economic boycott is all about. It goes to show how effective we've been thus far," boycott leader Amanda Mayes said of the festival's cancellation. "The city bases part of its budget on revenues that they typically generate from the jazz festival. And we've always maintained that those revenues are never funneled back into the black community."

The boycott was started in July 2001 by three grassroots civil rights groups that claimed the city had made no substantial progress on racial inequalities in the city since the riots.

The movement got off to a slow start but gained momentum when comedian Bill Cosby canceled two concerts at the Aronoff Center for the Arts a year ago. African-American artists such as jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, singer Smokey Robinson, actress Whoopi Goldberg, hip-hop star Wycleaf Jean and filmmaker Spike Lee, among others, soon followed suit.

Some of the largest conventions booked in 2002 and 2003 pulled out of the city because of the boycott as well. The Progressive National Baptist Convention was the first major convention to abide by the boycott. It was followed by the National Urban League.

The Budweiser Detroit Music Festival is set for Aug. 1-2, a week after the Cincinnati event had been planned. That event began in 2001 as a one-day Labor Day show. Santangelo handled production.

This year he is coming in as a full partner. The result is an expanded show that will basically replicate what Cincinnati would have seen, right down to the sound and light systems and staging.

"I'm not happy about this," Santangelo said. "I had really been looking forward to coming in and being the first music event in the Great American Ball Park. I'm very disappointed that this issue hasn't been resolved."

Last year, the cancellation of the stadium event resulted in a scaled-down soul show at U.S. Bank Arena on the same weekend. No plans have been announced for an alternate event this summer.

E-mail lnager@enquirer.com