After a prolonged series of setbacks and artist pull-outs, the founders of the 50th anniversary Woodstock Music and Arts Festival announced Wednesday afternoon that the event has officially been cancelled.

In a press release, festival organizers cited multiple reasons for the cancellation—including struggles with the originally planned location of the Glen and Vernon Downs in upstate New York, as well as artist conflicts when a subsequent plan to hold a version of the festival at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland, was floated but didn’t gain traction.

“Due to conflicting radius issues in the D.C. area, many acts were unable to participate and others passed for their own reasons,” said Woodstock 50 co-founder Michael Lang, who also encouraged artists and agents, who all had been fully paid, to donate 10 percent of their fees to causes of their choice in the spirit of peace. “We thank the artists, fans, and partners who stood by us even in the face of adversity. My thoughts turn to Bethel and its celebration of our 50th anniversary to reinforce the values of compassion, human dignity, and the beauty of our differences embraced by Woodstock.”

Whether the festival would go on as planned has been an ongoing saga.

In its first iteration, the festival was to be held at the Watkins Glen racetrack in upstate New York in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the original Woodstock. The idea was for it to have the same energy of the past rock festivals that have long lived in infamy. But as the closer the calendar inched toward to the August 16 date, the more skeptical both concertgoers and artists became.

When the original plans fell through—legal battles withstanding—organizers scrambled to find another venue. Merriweather Post Pavilion had agreed to host the event as long as bands and artists signed on. But that proved too difficult to arrange in a short amount of time. This past week, an array of big-name artists, from John Fogerty to Jay-Z, backed out of their performances.

“Hopefully, with plenty of time to prepare, Merriweather will become the site of a future festival that captures the original vibe,” said Seth Hurwitz, chairman of I.M.P., which operates Merriweather Post Pavilion. “While we were able to quickly eliminate the venue portion of the challenge to present Woodstock, it was just too late in the game. A lot of people clearly wanted it to happen.”

In the end, it became clear to organizers that trying to put an event together at this point in time would not live up to the standards of what they had originally intended.

“We worked hard to find a way to produce a proper tribute,” said Greg Peck, principal of Woodstock 50. “Woodstock’s values of peace and tolerance are more important today than ever for all of us to stand for, and we look to the future for ways to honor and celebrate these ideals.”

The troubled Woodstock 50 Festival now looks like it will be relocated to Merriweather Post Pavilion. Organizers of the anniversary concert—initially scheduled to be held on the 50th anniversary of the now legendary music festival at Max Yasgur’s 600-acre dairy farm in upstate New York—recently lost a final bid to keep the event near its original location when the town of Vernon, New York rejected their application.

On Thursday, several national outlets including Bloomberg and the New York Times reported producers of the event—including Michael Lang, one of the organizers of the 1969 festival—were hoping to shift Woodstock 50 to the Columbia venue.

In an email to Baltimore magazine, I.M.P. chairman Seth Hurwitz, owner of the 9:30 Club and The Anthem and operator of Merriweather Post Pavilion, said Woodstock 50 organizers had approached Merriweather about hosting the concert here in Columbia.

“The Woodstock folks are working on securing the artists now,” Hurwitz wrote. “If the bands come, we’ll produce the show. We’re looking forward to getting an update as soon as Woodstock 50 has one.”

In March, Lang had announced that the lineup for Woodstock 50 would include John Fogerty, who performed at the original festival with Credence Clearwater Revival, and other period performers including David Crosby, Santana, Robert Plant, Canned Heat, Hot Tuna, Country Joe McDonald. The lineup also featured big names such as Jay-Z, The Killers, Imagine Dragons, Chance the Rapper, and Miley Cyrus among others.

After the announcement of the switch to Columbia, Fogerty said he would perform at a smaller anniversary event not connected to Woodstock 50 near the festival’s original site at the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts in Bethel, New York.

The Associated Press also reported that Jay-Z was pulling out of the concert. When the show was first announced, it was planned for the Watkins Glen racetrack in upstate New York, but when organizers failed to secure a mass gathering permit from the state Department of Health by June, the racetrack’s owners pulled out. By then, organizers were already feuding in court with former financial backer Dentsu Aegis.

“When we heard that there was an opportunity to save this festival and bring a piece of American history to our community this summer, we jumped at the chance,” Calvin Ball, the executive with Howard County, wrote in a note to Greg Peck, one of the organizers, according to reporting by Bloomberg. “Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia is a jewel of Howard County and one of the top music venues in the nation. It felt like such a natural fit to host a historic festival on our storied stage.”

Coinciding with the anniversary of Woodstock, a replica of the colorful VW touring bus of the 1960s’ Baltimore band Light—which became known as the “Light Bus” after photos of the bus at Woodstock made newspapers and magazines around the country—will be launched August 12 from the American Visionary Art Museum.

Woodstock wasn’t the only music festival in summer of ’69, of course, just the biggest. In fact, a few weeks prior—just 11 miles from Merriweather—the Laurel Race Course hosted the two-day Laurel Pop Festival, which included epic 1960s bands Led Zeppelin, Sly and the Family Stone, Jethro Tull, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, Johnny Winters, Jeff Beck, and the Guess Who.