The Tucson builder behind downtown’s biggest music festival

He’s also the principal architect of downtown’s biggest music festival.

Next weekend, that festival, Dusk, turns 10.

“I kind of feel like the city has really embraced us at this point,” Repp said, while his Dusk cofounder, John Rallis, attributed the 10-year milestone largely to Repp.

“I don't know if there's been a bigger champion for Tucson the last 10 years than him,” Rallis said. “He deserves the kudos more than anyone I know.”

The 10th annual Dusk Music Festival takes place at Jácome Plaza downtown Friday and Saturday with headliners including rappers BigXthaPlug and Fetty Wap, the psychedelic pop/electro-rock duo Phantogram, French DJ HOL! and the Utah indie pop band The Aces among a lineup that features more than 40 artists including several local bands.

Hitting 10 years wasn’t on anyone’s bingo card when they hosted the inaugural festival at Rillito Park in 2016.

“To say that I ever expected to go 10 years, I did not,” said the 53-year-old Repp. “I mean it's insane especially year one and year two — the amount of money we lost is staggering.”

“We lost our ass,” added Rallis. “I mean significant six figures.”

At a post-event meeting after that first festival, Rallis remembers reflecting on the lessons learned and also thinking Dusk was going to be one-and-done.

“We sat down with a bunch of people and we went through everything, and Page just stood there with a big smile on his face,” Rallis recalled. “He said, ‘Guys, I don't want this education that we went through to go to waste. We're going to go forward and we're going to do this again’."

“And when he said that, it just all kind of came together, and it was like, all right, we'll try this again,” Rallis said.

Nine years, two moves — from Rillito to Armory Park (2018 and 2019 events) to Jácome Plaza downtown (since 2021) — and a global pandemic later, the festival attracts about 7,000 fans each day, a third of them from outside of Tucson, including ticket buyers from 25 different states, Repp said.

This year, he and Rallis expect the audience to grow to 10,000 a day.

“We're gonna get close this year,” he said. “We're gonna flirt with that.”

“This festival is one of the best organized, least problematic, least disruptive events in downtown's history,” said Fletcher McCusker, an avid music fan and chairman of the board of Rio Nuevo, the special taxing district that backs downtown redevelopment and contributes $100,000 to the festival to keep it downtown.

“It's one of the things that marks the successful diversification of our downtown because it's an audience that probably otherwise wouldn't be coming to downtown Tucson,” McCusker said.

Putting Tucson on the map with music lovers is one of Repp’s goals for Dusk.

The other is to “give Tucson something to be proud of.”

The seeds of that were planted from the day that Repp arrived in Tucson as a University of Arizona freshman in 1992.

“I came from a very small town, and when I moved to Tucson, I fell in love with the U of A,” said Repp, the son of a builder and mason who grew up in the northeastern Arizona town of Snowflake.

"Tucson was a great small town, but still had a lot of the amenities that a larger city would,” he said. “I just fell in love and I never really looked anywhere.”

Tucson was far different than Snowflake, where Repp grew up in a home with no electricity or running water until he was a junior in high school.

“My dad was kind of a hippie. We lived off the grid and that kind of thing,” he said.

His father was a big music fan who toured with pop singer Eric Carmen and rocker Alice Cooper as a plus-one with his friends who were working with the bands. He also did some roadie work with Fleetwood Mac, Repp said.

His father’s record collection numbered close to a thousand and even though they had no electricity, “every once in a while we would get a generator and we'd have power for two hours and he'd play music,” he recalls.

“Growing up I learned all that music,” he said. “I know every word, every song from basically the '60s through now.”

Repp turned that passion into a side job DJing at friends’ house parties when he was in school. His friends chipped in to buy him professional DJ equipment when he turned 30 that he used for several years before giving up the side gig to spend more time with his young daughter.

Repp also shared his father’s love of building. When he was 20 and still had a couple of years to go in the U of A architecture program, Repp got his contractor’s license and started working 30 to 40 hours a week in the field while juggling his classes.

By the time he graduated in 1998, Repp had earned a reputation in Tucson for his work, which included building a sustainable cement block home in the Barrio Blue Moon Neighborhood near the crossroads of East Speedway and North Main Avenue as his senior thesis. He and his wife lived in the home until their daughter Ramona was 7 or 8 years old.

His award-winning firm, Repp + McLain Design & Construction, has been a driving force behind a number of iconic renovations including the Sol Block along Broadway’s Sunshine Mile that is home to Rocco's Little Chicago pizzeria; and the historic mid-20th century Googie-style diner on East Broadway that Tucson restauranteur Sally Kane (The Coronet) will reopen early next year as Howdy Diner.

Last week he was on site at his latest large-scale project, the multimillion-dollar renovation of Tucson Warehouse & Transfer building (aka Benjamin Supply) on East Sixth Street at Seventh Avenue for the Scottsdale-based owner Central Arizona Supply. The Rio Nuevo-backed project will turn the historic warehouse into a “high-end appliance retail store,” said McCusker.

“It's going to be an unbelievable transition,” McCusker said, adding that Repp and the owners are working to restore the landmark 40-foot-tall “Goddess of Agave” mural that dates back to 2016. The mural, which was never given a clear coat, was slated for removal because it had faded and needed repairs.

The idea of prioritizing the mural is an example of the passion Repp has for downtown Tucson, McCusker said.

“There are a handful of people that you could identify that are cut out of that same cloth, and he's a huge mover and leader,” McCusker said. “(He is) really passionate about what our downtown can become.”

Repp doesn’t take the community’s support for granted and sees Dusk cheerleaders like McCusker and sponsor HSL Properties as co-conspirators in a plan to “make Tucson a better place.”

“We couldn't do it without them. Just amazing support, just so thankful and so grateful for what they've done,” Repp said, adding that he will go the distance “to produce the best event I possibly can because these guys put their faith in me.”

“If they're ever let down, it won't be because of my level of effort,” he said.