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Friday afternoon, Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto met in his fifth-floor office with Public Safety Director Wendell Hissrich and Pittsburgh Three Rivers Regatta Chairman John R. Bonassi.
On the agenda: Concerns about creditors who were owed money by LionHeart Event Group, a Pittsburgh-based event management company responsible for the upcoming EQT Three Rivers Regatta.
LionHeart, the city said, hadn’t paid $28,000 for regatta security provided by police in 2017 and 2018 at the signature festival along Pittsburgh's three rivers.
"Not only hadn't the city been paid for the past few years for our officers," Mr. Peduto recalled, "but numerous vendors, when they heard that we were in that situation, began calling us."
For the past year, Mr. Hissrich had been pressing LionHeart for the money. Public safety officials were getting frustrated.
Few people outside that room knew that the three-day party on the waterways -- an $800,000 extravaganza expected to draw roughly a half-million people -- was foundering.
On Tuesday, it sank.
Calling the regatta a “regional treasure,” Charles D. Scholz, a board member and its solicitor, announced that the show — a fixture since 1978 — would not go on because of what officials described as “falsified” records, misrepresentations and lack of payments to vendors by LionHeart.
“The board had no choice but to cancel this year’s Three Rivers Regatta,” Mr. Scholz said during a news conference at Rivers Casino on the North Shore. “To be clear, the blame for this cancellation rests solely with LionHeart.”
Mr. Scholz — appearing with Mr. Peduto and Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald — was tasked with acknowledging at the 11th hour an uncomfortable reality: There was no way the regatta was going to happen, not even an abbreviated version relegated to the North Shore, one of the desperation measures that officials had been exploring.
“The mayor and I are very disappointed for the region,” Mr. Fitzgerald said. “There needs to be a full investigation of the finances.”
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LionHeart’s president and owner, Derek Weber, did not respond to phone, text or email messages.
This was to be the third year that LionHeart would serve as the regatta’s “subcontracted event manager.” But Mr. Weber has been involved with the event for a decade through several companies. His LinkedIn page shows that he worked for Peony Entertainment, Pyrotecnico and ISM/USA.
Samantha Moyer, the former senior events coordinator at LionHeart, said she left in October to pursue other opportunities and was unaware of any red flags or problems with regard to the regatta.
“Am I surprised by this information?” she said of the allegations against Mr. Weber. “Yeah, I’m absolutely surprised.”
Ms. Moyer, 27, of Mount Washington, said she handled fundraising, logistics and social media for the regatta. Vendor payments, insurance and record-keeping were all functions overseen by Mr. Weber, she said.
“That’s all on Derek’s side,” she said. “I wasn’t really privy to that information.”
Ms. Moyer said LionHeart was a two-person team — she and Mr. Weber.
But when it came to money, it seems to have been a one-man show. Mr. Weber was responsible for handling sponsorship money that flowed into LionHeart as revenue and flowed out as payments to vendors.
All the while, Mr. Scholz indicated, Mr. Weber provided the board with financial records, at least some of which the solicitor claimed were “falsified.” Monthly reports from LionHeart, he said, indicated that bills had been paid, even when they hadn't been.
Asked to describe Mr. Weber, for whom she started to work in May 2015, Ms. Moyer said, “He’s a family man, and I’ve always enjoyed working alongside him. But he has a lot of things on his plate. He runs this whole festival and he has a whole company he runs by himself.”
Mr. Scholz said the regatta had launched an internal probe and anticipates litigation, and he defended the board and said it provided oversight.
“There were certain safeguards, but given how fast things led up to the event, the board was caught off guard,” he said.
The arrears on security payments to Pittsburgh were among several warning signs that something was amiss.
The Allegheny County Sheriff's Office said it, too, had been stiffed by LionHeart -- more than $25,000 for security last year.
"We will be pursuing litigation on this. It’s that substantial," said Chief Deputy Sheriff Kevin Kraus, who added that the office declined to provide security this year because of the outstanding debt.
The state of Pennsylvania hadn't been paid, either, for the use of Point State Park.
Gov. Tom Wolf’s office said the state was “reviewing the changes and assessing what costs may still be outstanding.”
Mr. Peduto said he learned about the financial problems early last week from his public safety director.
Asked why two years of arrears were allowed to accrue without the city informing the regatta board, the mayor said, "Because other agencies of the city had been paid and we were working directly with LionHeart on receiving payment and were being told that the payment was on its way.
"But at the same time you have to understand that we want to support the regatta. Our goal is to be able to have this as an annual event and to work with them over payments or permits, to be flexible. But once we started receiving word from other vendors, we informed their board of what we had learned so far."
Mr. Peduto said that after sitting down Friday with Mr. Bonassi and two other regatta board members, his plan to save the event was to move it the North Shore.
That effort had to be scuttled, the officials said, after they learned LionHeart had not paid for liability insurance. Without insurance, the permit application was withdrawn, Mr. Scholz said.
LionHeart had provided the regatta with regular updates throughout the year, Mr. Scholz said. He reeled off a dizzying array of responsibilities for the tiny company: handling insurance, permits, security, sponsorship money, food vendors and race organizers.
“Late last week the board learned for the first time that LionHeart had misrepresented the status of the sponsorships and payments to a variety of vendors,” Mr. Scholz said.
Finally, on Tuesday morning, the regatta scrambled to contact sponsors, vendors and entertainers.
Michael B. Laffin, a vice president and spokesman for EQT Corp., the regatta's primary sponsor, said, "We're disappointed about the cancellation but we agree with the decision."
EQT learned only Monday about problems, Mr. Laffin said.
“We’ll stay close to the board as they do their investigation, and then we’ll figure out what our next steps are after we have all the facts,” Mr. Laffin said.
The regatta, which features powerboat races, the Anything that Floats race, various water stunts and concerts, has been a summer tradition in Pittsburgh since 1978.
Pittsburgh performance art group Squonk Opera was prepping to premiere a new piece, "Hand to Hand," at the event. It was described as being "propelled by hands the size of a house" -- the puppet hands are 20 feet tall -- "and original music that takes the roof off."
Squonk co-artistic director Jackie Dempsey said via email, "We're still in shock about [the cancellation] We are disappointed and scrambling to see if we can do it somewhere else."
That somewhere else was coming into view later Tuesday: "We are on for doing multiple shows on Saturday evening, Downtown," Ms. Dempsey said, adding that more information would be released Wednesday.
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At Point State Park hours after the announcement, workers were putting the finishing touches on a sand sculpture of the city skyline.
Jill Ellis, owner of Florida-based Sandsational Sand Sculpting, said LionHeart had paid her in advance. But she was unsure whether the tent covering the sculpture would stay up. The McKeesport company that supplied the tent had also contracted with LionHeart.
Nevertheless, she planned to complete the sculpture, tent or not.
“I’ve been contracted to make a sculpture and I will make it,” she said. “We want to finish this, as a gift to the city.”
What about the roughly 40 teams of boat racers set to compete along the Allegheny River?
Tim Seebold, series manager for the NGK F1 Powerboat Championship, said organizers were "still trying to figure that out. My primary concern right now is to let all our teams know" the event was canceled and keep them from incurring "any more expenses than they already have."
At VisitPITTSBURGH, staffers called Downtown hotels to gauge the impact, said Tom Loftus, the tourism agency's chief marketing officer.
"We’re finding out there’s not any cancellations in our hotels yet," he said, noting that hotels were "confident they'll hold steady" on occupancy — in part because so many visitors still are expected for other reasons including the Pirates-Mets home series and the Replay FX gaming event at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center.
The music scene in Pittsburgh scrambled to find a silver lining for Billy Strings, the touring bluegrass virtuoso.
Instead of playing the regatta, the guitarist, mandolinist and banjo player from Michigan will now perform at the Roxian Theater in McKees Rocks on Friday.
“I saw the cancellation on social media [Tuesday] morning and immediately hit up his agent, who had not been notified,” according to Ben Penigar, of Grey Area Productions.
Staff writers Scott Mervis, Bob Batz Jr., Sharon Eberson, Ashley Murray and Nick Garber contributed. Jonathan D. Silver: jsilver@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1962 or on Twitter @jsilverpg.
First Published: July 30, 2019, 2:49 p.m.
Updated: July 30, 2019, 3:26 p.m.
