“22 in 23”

Mohammed Mirzai had done the math before the interview, tallying up the number of concerts he and his wife, Sharon, have staged in Marsh Creek’s Community Park as their antidote to Covid loneliness.

“In March of 2020, we were walking in the park, bored out of our brains because we couldn’t see our friends, and thought what a magnificent place this is to get people together”, he recalled. Their Birdie Way home abuts the park.

“But how?’, they asked themselves.

Then the idea sprouted: why not bring in bands for small concerts in the park, letting Marsh Creek residents be entertained and feel safe mingling as they social distance?

Running with their new brainstorm, the couple reached out to performers Tim and Sharon Hazsard whom they knew, and quickly booked them to stage the first Marsh Creek Concert in the Park on April 30, 2020.

The event proved to be such a success that Mirzai Productions (an impresario kind of name if they ever started big professional bookings) decided to repeat it monthly.

One problem:

“We didn’t know anything about bands”, Mirzai conceded.

So, they talked to friends, reaching out to “someone, who knew someone, who knew someone else, and we ended up with 9 bands, 22 concerts”.

Expanding on his earlier metrics, Mirzai added attendance of “25-30 people per event, nearly 1000 bodies over those 23 months and an average of $250 in collections per event. In all, the effort added $5000 into the economy and an additional fundraising donation of $1000 to SAFE”, he said.

“Bars and restaurants were shut down and these guys were out of work, and with us they gained some practice together and earned a few bucks. The bands even started calling us because they had no other place to go.”

Passing the hat among the park patrons, the couple never sent a band home with less than $200, On slow days they made up the difference from their own pockets and on better days repaying themselves if they collected a surplus.  

Looking into 2022, the couple says they will continue booking concerts “as long as there is interest”. The first will be Debbie and Tony T at 4pm, January 27.

But one big change. Concerts will now last only 90 minutes.

“We have no bathrooms and people can’t hold it as long as two hours”, Mirzai explained helpfully before smoothly seguing into a pitch to Marsh Creek’s newly elected Board of Directors.

“We showed the community what an incredible resource, a gem, the park is, noting that other groups have held events there, including Spoonbill Neighbors. I would like to build a bathroom or have an upscale Port-a-Potty and add lighting and a fan to the gazebo”, he said.

Just to mention a few of the many potential improvements that could be made to Marsh Creek’s 30+ year old Community Park.