Wild Splash concert leaving Clearwater for Tampa

Once again, Clearwater is losing an annual -- and controversial -- concert to Tampa.

This time, Wild Splash, the popular, daylong hip-hop event, is leaving the Coachman Park waterfront for the Ford Amphitheatre at the Florida State Fairgrounds, where promoters think they can bring in larger crowds and make more money, Clearwater officials said today.

Wild Splash is following the Next Big Thing, the hard-rocking concert that in late 2006 made the same move for similar reasons.

Wild Splash is known for its old-school, new-school and slick beats. Last year's event, an all-ages mix of hip-hop, reggae and dance music, featured Young Jeezy, an Atlanta rapper who openly makes reference to his early days in the drug trade.

Clearwater city spokeswoman Joelle Castelli said she was under the impression that the concert would be held some time in March, but so far it has not been promoted on the Web sites of the sponsor or the amphitheater. Representatives of WLLD-98.7 FM, which hosts the event, could not immediately be reached for comment.

Although the concert drew big, exuberant crowds, some city officials were upset with the foul language they heard and the brief nudity they saw, mostly from flashers. Raucous behavior also was a problem with the Next Big Thing.

"I always had a problem with some of the impact of the concert, because of some of the incidents that occurred, so I'm not sorry to see that go," Clearwater Mayor Frank Hibbard said today. "We want to have diversity in our entertainment, but at the same time we don't want the negative impact it brought. I'm not going to lose any sleep over it."

Both events packed Coachman Park with up to 15,000 people. But the larger Ford Amphitheatre near U.S. 301 and Interstate 4 can probably hold an additional 5,000.

- Mike Donila, Times staff writer