Summer fests market suburban downtowns

Summer fests market suburban downtowns

Throughout the early part of the summer season, metropolitan outdoor festivals have encountered record attendances, which has been a boon to area downtown businesses.

The catalyst for much of the festival success has been the beautiful weather of late. Obviously, residents are more likely to attend an outdoor event when Mother Nature cooperates.

“You can’t overlook that this was probably the best weather we’ve had for Ribfest in over 20 years,” said Walter Johnson, a member of the Steering Committee for the Naperville Exchange Club’s Ribfest, held in Downtown Naperville over the Independence Day holiday weekend.

“When you have the kind of weather that we had—that was just temperate across the board, with sunshine and a cool breeze—people want to get out.”

Ribfest executives estimate the attendance on July 4th itself at more than 75,000 people, with more than 255,000 attendees over the four-day period; both are record numbers. The festival grounds were so crowded on the 4th that the entrance to Ribfest was sealed off for public safety at 7 p.m. by the Naperville fire marshal, two and one-half hours before the start of the fireworks.

A record number of people also turned out at the Taste of Joliet, held from June 27-29 at Joliet Memorial Stadium.

“We had 25,000 people come through, with is about 5,000 more than we had last year,” said Brad Staab, superintendent of communication for the Joliet Park District.

Besides beautiful weather, many festival participants came out to see the many big name bands playing across the metropolitan area. Geneva’s Swedish Days, held from June 17-22 and touted as the “Grandaddy” of all Illinois festivals, saw a spike in attendance on day one of the event due in large part to the musical act Liverpool, a popular Beatles cover band.

“We had a number of people come for our kickoff, which was the Liverpool band,” said Sandy Portincaso, public relations and events coordinator for the Geneva Chamber of Commerce. “We had some great musical entertainment this year that attracted people.”

Naperville’s Ribfest featured rock legend Ted Nugent, as well as REO Speedwagon, Joan Jett, Foghat and country act Trace Adkins. The Taste of Joliet boasted national acts Pat Benatar and Jo Dee Messina to help draw record crowds.

Often, booking high-end musical acts can be a challenge for a city like Joliet that is located a considerable distance from Chicago.

“There’s a lot that goes into it,” said Staab. “You have to prove to yourself that you can put on an event like that and that you can hold that many people and that you can draw a crowd. (Musical acts) will come, it’s just obviously a little harder than trying to get them to come to a Chicago event.”

For Ribfest, the biggest challenge for the Naperville Exchange Club was logistics: from coordinating some 3,700 volunteers to accommodating more than 60,000 attendees a night.

“You’re building a little mini-city because you’ve go to be able to accommodate 60,000 to 70,000 people,” Johnson said. “If you think in terms of Naperville being (roughly) 140,000 people, you have to be able to, at any given time, host half of them in two to three square blocks and do it in a way that at least the majority will walk away feeling that they had a great experience.”

The extensive planning and preparations necessary for large-scale, outdoor events is normally done in the interest of highlighting businesses located in the community’s downtown areas.

“Most communities that do festivals in the heart of their downtown do so to market their downtown,” said John Quigley, president and CEO of the Elmhurst Chamber of Commerce, a member of the planning committee for last month’s Elmfest. “They use the festival as a huge opportunity to bring in people from outside the community.”

Typically, the businesses that benefit most from a big event are in the food and beverage industry, as many festival-goers would rather eat inside than on a picnic table under the hot sun, Quigley said.

Tom Althoff, president of the Lisle Chamber of Commerce, said that events like Lisle’s Eyes to the Skies don’t have much of an impact on local businesses, other than those companies that cater to basic needs.

“(Event participants) do not necessarily patronize businesses in Lisle when they come, other than if they need gasoline,” he said. “Everything else is at the festival. The food is there and they can park in festival parking lots.”

While a summer festival may not have an immediate impact on a city’s business community, there are normally long-term benefits to hosting a large event.

“The Chamber does it as a business-to-community expo,” said Quigley. “A number of our businesses have an opportunity to be on the street and pitch their wares to the public at large as opposed to a business to business expo.

“The city looks at the festival as a promotion of the downtown and overall image marketing of Elmhurst.”

Many communities donate a large portion of their summer festival revenue to a worthy charity. The money earned from Naperville’s Ribfest will go to help prevent child abuse and domestic violence.

“Those are our two key challenges in the community that we decided to address,” Johnson said. “We make the money available to organizations that have as a part of their mission protecting children and trying to assist in issues that create domestic violence.

“Attendance was a record across the board and at the end of the day that should lead to record fund-raising dollars, which is a good thing.”

Jeremy Stoltz, Staff Writer

Posted on Wednesday, July 16, 2008 (Archive on Wednesday, July 23, 2008)
Posted by jstoltz Contributed by jstoltz

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