FOLEY — What was billed as an experimental music festival appears to have gotten new life weeks after the event’s permit was withdrawn in Foley.

Now, with the Baldwin County Commission’s approval, the Festival of Musicians will be held July 8 through12 at Baldwin County Bicentennial Park in Stockton, according to Rick Shell, event executive producer.

“Never give up when you have something you really believe in. The world is full of people who will try to stop you. You must overcome any obstacles no matter what,” Shell said in a e-mail last week.

In that same e-mail, Shell made reference to Foley City Council withdrawing a conditional permit for the Festival of Musicians in early March. Back then the Festival was proposed for a site along the Foley Beach Express during Spring Break.

As Shell noted last week, the city council pulled the Festival’s permit nine days before the event was to take place, an event Shell had said might be an annual one. The inaugural Festival of Musicians was expected to draw anywhere from 5,000 to 30,000.

“City officials cited fears of local residents that the event would be too large and would be another ‘Woodstock,’” Shell said, although he billed the Foley event as three days of music and camping in a kind of Woodstock-type atmosphere.

“Event organizers tried to dispel these rumors as being totally off-base, but the handful of frightened residents won out in the end, despite a potentially huge revenue boost to the city and local businesses.”

In an economic impact statement Shell provided city leaders in February, he projected $1.1 million for the surrounding area if 5,000 festivalgoers attended and $6.7 million if 30,000 showed up. Over 300 bands were scheduled to play at the Foley event.

Now, Shell said the musical event will take place at Bicentennial Park “amid thousands of acres of woodlands, wetlands, rivers, lakes and forests … .’

Bicentennial Park is located on Ala. Highway 225.

Shell said the musical event — which he described last week as “5 days, camping, hiking, boating and hundreds of bands, singers and songwriters” — has been in the planning stages for 14 months.