The Downers Grove Rotary Club’s GroveFest proposal was approved by the village council Tuesday night, ensuring a privately operated alternative to Heritage Fest, which the council suspended last year citing budget issues.
The club, which has hosted annual Oktoberfest celebrations and also operated the Heritage Fest Beer Garden for the past five years, is confident in its ability to pull off Grove Fest, said President Barb Wysocki. The three-day event is scheduled for July 15-18.
“We’ve taken a hard look at this,” Wysocki told the DGreport. “We know the risks involved, but we feel if we run it effectively, we will be able to make a profit.”
Rotary will be responsible for covering all expenses relating to the festival, including those incurred by police, fire, public works and senior village staff. The club is required to pay $25,600 two weeks before the festival and also to furnish another $30,720 in cash or letter of credit to cover any overruns.
When the item was discussed at last week’s workshop meeting, commissioners repeatedly emphasized that all costs associated with the festival will be born by Rotary.
Concerns were also expressed regarding Rotary’s attendance estimate of 25,000, which some commissioners considered too low. If more people come than can be accommodated in the entertainment garden, they will be encouraged to visit local shops and restaurants, Wysocki said. Police will be on hand to help with crowd control.
With public safety its chief concern and responsibility, the village reserves the right to cancel or shutdown the festival at any time. “They want us to execute perfectly,” Wysocki said.
Realizing that crowd control could be an issue, the Rotary purposely conceived GroveFest as a much smaller event than previous village-run festivals. There will be about a dozen amusement rides for all ages, a single stage featuring local bands and other homegrown talent, and an “entertainment garden” that will serve beer and food provided by local restaurants.
“This will be a total community event,” Wysocki said. “There won’t be lots of vendors from other cities or states.”
The site will be the library parking lot and nearby commuter parking lot along the south side of the train tracks. Main and Curtiss streets will remain open.
Wysocki said GroveFest will be marketed only to Downers Grove and neighboring communities in an attempt to keep attendance within bounds. Heritage Fest typically attracted more than 100,000 attendees.
The club plans to recruit and train as many as 200 volunteers to staff the festival, Wysocki said. Members are also carving out an opportunity for up to 20 local non-profit organizations to participate. The groups have in the past relied on Heritage Fest for fundraising.
The council also encouraged Rotary to work with the Downers Grove Arts Council, which also had a festival proposal in the works. The arts council was looking to create an event that would allow local arts groups to recoup some of the financial support lost as a result of the 2010 village budget cuts.
Wysocki said the Rotary and the arts council had discussed working together on a festival, however philosophical differences made the difficult. The arts council wanted to use an events company to produce the festival, while Rotarians wanted to handle it themselves, Wysocki said.
“We respectfully and cordially decided (a partnership) wouldn’t work,” she said.
The arts council submitted its proposal to the village on April 8. Given that it had taken several weeks of discussion to bring the Rotary proposal up to village standards, commissioners decided time is too short to fully vet the arts council’s submission.
Rotary has also made contact with the teen organizers of the “Bring Back the 2010 Downers Grove Heritage Fest” page on Facebook, which has more than 6,000 members.
“We will be looking for volunteers if any of those individuals would like to help out and volunteer for service hours,” Wysocki said. “We’re going to need people to clean up tables and perform other tasks and we will be reaching out through Facebook.”
Now that the council has approved the proposal, work can swing into high gear with less than three months until opening day. Wysocki said the organization is confident its 44 member professionals — ” a lot of smart people capable of planning and executing events” — are up to the task.
And “we’re crossing our fingers that we have great weather.”
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