COEUR D’ALENE, Idaho — A number of Coeur d’Alene businesses want their money back from a local concert promoter, and they want the city council’s help.
The business owners said they gave thousands of dollars to the company, Davis Enterprises Inc., which used to run the ‘Live After 5’ concert series, but that in 2024, the concerts were canceled and they didn’t get their money back.
Davis Enterprises Inc. owner, Tyler Davis, apologized in February to Coeur d’Alene City Council and the businesses.
“I’m not a crook. If I was, I certainly wouldn’t be here in front of you. I have the best intentions i mind,” Davis said. “I’ve had the opportunity to really take a hard look back at the last five years and how challenging and not fun it’s been to do this.”
Davis ran the ‘Live After 5’ concert series until the City of Coeur d’Alene canceled his contract last year. He told city council that a perfect storm of issues caused him not to be able to uphold his end of the deal.
“That year was just a crazy epiphany of really crummy weather, walking in with an underfunded season, and the first three events out, we lost anywhere between five to six to eight thousand dollars,” he said.
CDA City Council said Davis had a contract with the city’s Parks Department, but that he wasn’t making the payments he agreed to.
“The money from a contract like that goes to pay for the city services. It goes to pay for people to clean up afterwards, to monitor the event, to take care of any damages that is done to the park. It’s not like it’s a revenue source for us. It just pays for the cost of the city to host the event,” City Councilmember Dan Gookin said.
One of the businesses who said they didn’t get their money back from Davis is Las Brasas Mexican Grill. The owner, Ivan Guitron, said the restaurant paid $1,000 to secure their spot as a vendor.
Guitron said he’s not worried about getting his money back, but is disappointed for his fellow small business owners that lost their money.
“We thought it was unprofessional the way the business was ran. Because ‘Live After 5’, in a sense, was a business. We just didn’t want to conduct business with that,” he said.
CDA City Council said they aren’t sure if they want to get involved in the dispute between small businesses, and they’re not sure if there is anything they can do to help.
“It’s just that we have limited government here and there’s only so much we can do. We don’t want to be weighing in on neighbor-to-neighbor disputes or business-to-business disputes. I’d like to see us keep hands-off, but we do care and we do want to help. If there’s something we can do, I’m hoping we can do it,” Councilmember Gookin said.
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