Rothbury wraps up

ROTHBURY, Mich (WOOD) - Rothbury Festival 2009 wrapped up Sunday night and organizers said it was a big success.

More than 30,000 came to the Double JJ Ranch to enjoy the festival and tickets were still being sold Sunday evening. But this festival was intended to be about more than music and fun.

"Let's try to harness the music community into a durable social movement," Sarah Hayes of the Spitfire Agency said. "I hope we leave a great legacy. We left a $70,000 solar system on Shelby High last year and this year we got some wind turbines."

The festival has an obvious focus on "greening." There are recycle bins throughout the festival grounds as well as a number of exhibits that are made of recycled materials. The stages at the event are powered with generators that operate on bio-diesel.

The event was also host to more than 74 arrests as of Sunday morning. Lt. David Roesler says that most of the arrests were drug related.

"Most of the arrest we have made have been for delivery or attempted delivery," Roesler said.

Michigan State police brought in personnel from multiple jurisdictions to staff the event. Roesler says there were more arrests at this year's Rothbury Festival because of better patrolling.

"Different ways we approached things on the arrival day at the gates with the process for getting in and out. Some of the searches that went on by the security personnel here and coordination gave us more information about what they were finding," Roesler said.

The Routhbury Village president says he's just glad the event actually happened. Litigation about what would happen with the Double JJ Ranch after it's previous owners filed bankruptcy went well into 2009.

"As far as the lease of the property from Double JJ with the federal district court bankruptcy, we did not know whether the lease was going to go through until March or April," Robert Walker, Rothbury's Village president said.

The lingering litigation put a crunch on finalizing the big names that could perform at Rothbury. Walker says he expects next years show to be bigger with more time to book big names.

"Rothbury is just an enormous boom for the whole West Michigan area, not only the village of Rothbury," Walker said.

Michigan State Police say two people died at the festival last year. Both of them had overdosed on drugs. Roesler said that as of Sunday evening, there had not been any serious injuries or deaths.