Park District permits Riot Fest amid protester pushback against ‘mega fest’ music festivals
The Chicago Park District’s Board of Commissioners unanimously approved a provisional permit for Riot Fest on Wednesday, clearing the way for the three-day rock music festival to return to Douglass Park in September.
The festival faced heavy backlash last year as community members led a movement to evict big-ticket festivals from the park. Two other large music festivals held in the park last summer have since moved to other venues.
Detractors argued Riot Fest and “mega fests” scheduled in other neighborhood parks don’t benefit residents and bring noise, chaos and inaccessibility to public spaces. But many residents also voiced their support as Park District commissioners praised the independently owned festival for addressing community concerns.
Riot Fest expects to draw 50,000 people a day to the West Side neighborhood lined by North Lawndale and Little Village. The festival is scheduled to be held Sept. 15-17 and its lineup features the Foo Fighters, the Cure and Queens of the Stone Age.
When the vote to approve the festival’s provisional permit passed, North Lawndale Ald. Monique Scott, 24th, pumped her fist in the air.
“Riot Fest has helped move our community forward,” Scott told commissioners. “The festival shows North Lawndale in an entirely different light.”
About three dozen people in the crowd wore black T-shirts reading “Beyond The Fest,” a nod to the festival’s efforts to engage with and invest in the communities surrounding the park. Many in the crowd who rose in support of the festival came as part of Boxing Out Negativity, a North Lawndale-based nonprofit youth boxing program.
“Partnership with Riot Fest means a lot for our community. It provides jobs for young men. It gets young men off the streets,” the organization’s coach Derek Brown said.
Among several new community engagement efforts, Riot Fest organizers plan to host a showcase for the boxing program at the festival. Organizers also expanded the boundaries around the park where residents can get free tickets, created music festival curricula for nearby schools and committed to regular community meetings.
Riot Fest left Humboldt Park seven years ago because of neighbor complaints. Activists protesting the festival’s residence in Douglass Park argued Wednesday that noise and congestion from the festival could affect two nearby hospitals, Mount Sinai Hospital and St. Anthony Hospital.
“I’m not against Riot Fest. They have a great lineup. I love music. They need to move it to a more suitable location so there’s no impact on access to health care,” Douglass Park resident Florina Florea said.
After the vote, resident Joel Novak said he was disappointed, but not surprised that the festival was a go. He acknowledged the benefits the festival has brought the neighborhood.
“But I think ultimately it’s exploitative,” Novak said. “It’s just a lot more of an inconvenience. It’s loud. You get cut off from the park, obviously. Parking becomes a problem.”
Concert stages will be moved to face away from the hospitals and organizers will continue to meet with hospital staff and have a direct line of communication with them during the festival, Riot Fest community engagement director George Herrera said. The festival will also control sound with directional speakers, constantly regulated audio levels and hard limits to noise, Herrera said.
Riot Fest is expected to close around half of the park for three days. Some sections of the park will remain closed for over two weeks as the festival is set up and taken down, said Herrera, who added that he’s had over 100 meetings with community members about the festival.
Park District commissioners praised the festival for meeting with neighborhood residents to hear concerns and working to address them.
“This is not the end. This is the start,” Park District Superintendent Rosa Escareño told the Tribune after the meeting. “If they want to continue in Douglass Park beyond this year, they have to remain committed to the community in the long haul.”
Activists at the Park District meeting also criticized different “mega fests” coming to other parks across the city. Several argued the city should have a specific site for large music festivals if the festivals bring important revenue to the Park District, as officials suggested they do.
Luis Gomez spoke out against the Miche Fest and My House music festivals coming to Pilsen’s Harrison Park this summer. The music festivals bring loud music late at night, drunken people being a nuisance in the neighborhood and trash left in parks, he said.
“Our tax dollars paid for the parks and their public spaces, and yet they’re being privatized more by these big companies that make a profit,” Gomez said.
Several activists called for commissioners to block the permit for the Re:SET Chicago music festival starting in Riis Park next Friday. Community members in Belmont Cragin weren’t engaged in planning the festival and do not support it, they argued.
Preschool teacher Eric Branholm said he brings his young students around the park. They’ve seen baby ducklings hatch and helped clean the public space, he said.
“So what message does it send to them to trample this space, to destroy these habitats, to see trash litter the park,” he asked the commissioners.
Escareño agreed that community engagement should have been better before the festival was approved. Because the music festival has a smaller capacity than other l festivals, it went through a different approval process than larger festivals that are required to work with residents, she said.
Activists said the event will bring in 10,000 attendees for each of its three days. Escareño met with the activists for two hours last night, she said before reiterating that the festival would take place next weekend.
“Turning back the clock on that event at this point is very late in the game,” she said. Escareño said she would consider requiring smaller events in parks to further engage with communities
The one-stage festival’s headliners include LCD Soundsystem, boygenius and Steve Lacy.
Also at the meeting, Park District officials also said they expect to open all indoor and outdoor park pools on June 23. Lifeguard applications have nearly doubled since last year, when a lifeguard shortage kept over half Chicago’s pools closed, Park District pool and beach manager Andrew Walsh said.
The Park District hopes to confirm the full opening of the pools early next week, a district official said.
