Douglass Park neighbors divided over Riot Fest as some complain about damage and traffic while others say it brings in new vitality
On the final day of Riot Fest, concertgoers clad in band T-shirts and fanny packs streamed into Douglass Park. While artists such as 3OH!3 and BLACKSTARKIDS jammed inside, the mood outside the festival was jovial.
Some residents took the opportunity to sell parking spaces and ice cold water on one of the summer’s last scorching days. But signs on posts and sidewalks around the park pointed to the discontent that has brewed around the festival since it came to the West Side neighborhood: “Not a fan of Riot Fest,” said one. “Somebody’s getting rich! Selling our park!” read another.
Chicago’s four-day rock, punk and hip-hop music festival, which moved to Douglass Park in 2015 after residents campaigned for its removal from Humboldt Park, is a source of disagreement within the neighborhood.
Some who live nearby enjoy the festival, saying it brings jobs, economic investment and the opportunity to see an eclectic lineup — residents who live within four blocks of the festival can get free tickets. Others stress that the private festival blocks off access to parts of the neighborhood’s public park for weeks, bringing with it concert noise, congestion and damage to the park itself.
Sheila McNary, the arts and culture chair of the North Lawndale Community Coordinating Council and a North Lawndale resident since 2001, lives across from the park. “This is not a music venue; this is a public park,” she said.
McNary described how the closure of major thoroughfares for the festival, such as Sacramento and California avenues, turn smaller residential streets like hers into busy, crowded ones — even after the event is over and the larger streets remain blocked.
“Can you imagine thousands of Black people going into a white community like they do over here with this Riot Fest,” McNary said, “shutting down the streets where your company can’t come, and you’ve got to stop having particular things happening that day because of the parking? It wouldn’t happen. No way would that happen.”
McNary suggested Riot Fest could take place in Millennium Park or Grant Park, like Lollapalooza does.
Catherine Sollman, an artist who said she has lived in her house across the street from Douglass Park for two decades, agreed the festival should move. “Kids can’t focus on their homework when the Circle Jerks are playing 500 feet away,” she said.
The diesel fumes that festival-bound trucks spew on California Avenue aggravate her and her kids’ allergies, Sollman said. Her windows shake from the bass across the street, and she worries about being able to get back to her home if she leaves during the festival.
‘They tear up the fields’
Ernie Alvarez is a writing and soccer coach for an after-school program that serves elementary and middle school students in North Lawndale, Pilsen, Little Village and Back of the Yards. In the past, Riot Fest has made the Douglass Park soccer fields unsafe for kids to play on, Alvarez said, forcing his organization to scramble to get permits for other fields.
“They tear up the park; they tear up the fields where the middle school teams play,” he said.
Alvarez, who lives just a few blocks from Douglass Park, said he’s lived in the neighborhood since the mid-1960s.
“Living here, through all these years, and seeing supposedly what this fest is supposed to be doing for our area, I don’t see it. I see no benefit for us. It’s become a headache that we have to deal with,” Alvarez said.
Revenue from Riot Fest goes to the Chicago Park District’s general fund, but Alvarez said he doesn’t feel like Douglass Park has benefited from those funds in a meaningful way. He pointed to the park’s bike paths, which he said are still in terrible shape.
Park District spokesperson Michele Lemons said in an email that revenue from Riot Fest and similar festivals is distributed to parks across the city “as needed.”
Over the last five years, Lemons wrote, the Park District has invested $2 million from its general fund into Douglass Park, in addition to $3.7 million in outside funding.
That money went to things like field house improvements, new playground equipment, pathways, lighting and golf course, tennis court and running track rehabilitation, according to Lemons.
At a Chicago Park District board meeting earlier this month, several residents spoke out against Riot Fest.
“We know it’s an inconvenience to the community; we’ve never shied away from that. But the revenue made from the event does go back into our programs and our mission with kids,” Park District Superintendent Michael Kelly said at the meeting. Kelly said the agency was “evaluating” Riot Fest and other festivals for the future.
Surrounded by North Lawndale, a predominantly Black neighborhood, and the largely Latino Little Village, Douglass Park was known until 2020 as Douglas Park. It had been named after U.S. Sen. Stephen A. Douglas, who advocated for voters to decide the legality of slavery rather than abolish it and who profited off his wife’s ownership of a slave plantation in Mississippi. The park’s name was changed after student activists from Village Leadership Academy pushed for it to be renamed after abolitionists Frederick Douglass and his wife, Anna Murray Douglass.
Riot Fest was held in Humboldt Park for three years before significant community pushback led to its ouster. A particularly muddy year in 2014 was the last straw for many Humboldt Park residents; the Tribune’s RedEye reported at the time that repairs related to the September 2014 fest were still ongoing in May 2015. In the end, Ald. Roberto Maldonado, 26th, withdrew his support for the festival. The festival then moved to Douglass Park.
‘Brings vitality’
Craig Perry, who has lived near the park for 14 years, sees it differently.
“I think it brings vitality into the neighborhood,” Perry said. “It opens up this neighborhood to people who have never been here.”
Matthew Valadez, who said he had lived near the park for all of his 46 years, said he thinks Riot Fest should stay. Valadez worked as a bartender at the festival and has done so for years.
“I mean, it’s a festival, what do you expect?” he said.
Valadez said he prefers Riot Fest concertgoers over attendees of the Lyrical Lemonade Summer Smash Festival, whom he described as “a bunch of rude kids from the suburbs.” Lyrical Lemonade set up shop in Douglass Park earlier this summer, and Valadez doesn’t want to see that festival return. But he likes the Riot Fest crowd, which he describes as older and “respectable.” His mom sits outside to listen to the music, he said.
“If they don’t like it, why don’t they move to the suburbs?” Valadez added of the festival’s critics.
During Riot Fest, Kate Marsh, a Chicagoan who lives in Roscoe Village, rested on a lawn outside the festival. Marsh said she had been coming to Riot Fest since 2013 and that the weekend was her favorite of the year. She had seen some of the signage criticizing Riot Fest outside the festival and wanted to know more about the context.
“I’m really adamant about the fact that we are guests in somebody else’s neighborhood, and it’s our job to be respectful,” Marsh said. “And if the members of this neighborhood aren’t happy about it, while it’s inconvenient to find another place, our inconvenience does not outweigh their needs.”
