Green Space for Greenbacks: The Debate Over Private Fests in Public Parks

[Note: This Chicago Reader article lies a bit outside Streetsblog Chicago's usual wheelhouse of transportation and livable streets topics, but since it covers an important local public space issue, I thought it might be of interest to Streetsblog readers.]

On a recent Monday afternoon, members of a group called Concerned Citizens of Riot Fest in Douglas Park guided a visitor around the west-side green space they say was disfigured by the three-day music festival last fall. Eight months after the fest, the south end of Douglas Park—bounded by Ogden, Albany, 19th, and California and occupied by soccer and baseball fields—still displays tire ruts and wide, muddy areas where heavy foot traffic from 135,000 festgoers tore up the turf. Although the tour took place days after the last rainstorm, pools of standing water remained on the compacted dirt.

The fest debuted in Douglas Park last September after it was ousted from Humboldt Park, where it had taken place since 2012. Humboldt Park residents complained that the event turned that park's turf into a mud zone that Riot Fest organizers never properly repaired, prompting 26th Ward alderman Roberto Maldonado to pull his support for the concert.

Members of Concerned Citizens say Douglas Park has experienced the same problems. In the immediate aftermath of the concert, much of the south end of the park was fenced off until November while crews hired by the festival made repairs—but the activists say it's obvious the green space remains in disrepair.

"This park is not structured to receive that many people and maintain its health," says nearby resident Nance Klehm, a veteran landscaper and sustainability advocate. "There's no Band-Aid to that. It needs to be restructured, and the soil needs to be reengineered."

Concerned Citizens activists say that Riot Fest should never have come to Douglas Park. They claim that Riot Fest, Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the Chicago Park District, and the local aldermen made the decision to move the event to the park with little or no input from the primarily African-American and Latino residents of the neighboring North Lawndale and Little Village neighborhoods.

They've hosted public meetings on the subject, collected signatures on petitions against the fest, held protests, and have lobbied their aldermen and the Park District about the matter. At a 24th Ward community meeting in June 2015, the first to take place after it was announced Riot Fest would be held in Douglas Park, Concerned Citizens members displayed signs reading "A 3-day binge is not an economic development plan" and "Lawndale is a community, not a commodity."

"It's disrespectful to tell two communities that something is going to happen in their park instead of asking them to let you have it in their park," says UIC grad student Sharaya Tindal, who helped form Concerned Citizens in spring 2015 because she was worried about the impact Riot Fest would have on Douglas Park.

The group is upset that the festival will return to Douglas Park on September 16-18. "This concert is not for this community," Tindal says. "It's not even for us, and we are being locked out of our own park."

It's a growing refrain in Chicago. As large-scale music festivals—Riot Fest, Lollapalooza, North Coast, Pitchfork—have proliferated throughout the city over the last decade, aldermen, community groups, and concerned residents have begun questioning the rationale behind turning over public parks to private entities for much of the summer. And with repairs sometimes stretching into the fall, popular areas of parkland can remain closed for much of the peak season.

Read the rest of the article on the Chicago Reader website.