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After 40 Years, Riverfest to Suspend Annual Festival

3 min read

The Riverfest Inc. board of directors said Tuesday that it will suspend its annual music festival — the state’s largest — which marked its 40th year in June.

“We can no longer deliver the experience that Riverfest fans have come to expect,” Executive Director DeAnna Korte said in a news release. “Rising costs of performers’ fees, coupled with a greater number of competing festivals around the country are the underlying factors leading to this decision.”

Organizers noted that, at its height, the festival drew 250,000 attendees “with an estimated annual economic impact of $33 million in the community.”

“With our bills paid, and our heads held high, we are closing the doors,” Cheddy Wigginton, a board member who served two terms as chairman, said. “We had a fantastic 40-year run, and we had a great economic impact upon Little Rock and Arkansas. DeAnna and her team — supported by thousands of dedicated volunteers — did a phenomenal job.”

The nonprofit organization’s news release cited “a national trend” of festivals closing and filing bankruptcy. Among them: BayFest in Mobile, Alabama; Gathering of the Vibes in Connecticut; Pemberton in Canada; Karoondinha in Pennsylvania; and Wakarusa in Ozark (Franklin County).

“For a nonprofit like Riverfest, it’s about income vs. expenses,” Korte said. “We are a very small market, and there are larger music festivals surrounding us. The festival market is very crowded. It’s hard for a nonprofit to compete in a growing market of for-profit festivals, which are driving up prices and making it difficult to secure artists.”

Korte said the budget is $2.6 million.

That may sound like a lot, but in the world of music festivals, it is a shoestring budget,” she said. “It costs $300,000 just to run two stages. Security, which is a high priority for us, is nearly $200,000. Fencing the perimeter is $60,000. Cleaning the grounds is $30,000. We have done everything we could do to cut costs. We trimmed over $300,000 in expenses between 2015 and 2016. 

“But we also want to provide a quality event. The things that we could control, we controlled, to the best of our ability. But there are a lot of uncontrolled variables.”

Until last year, Riverfest had been a three-day event of music, food and family entertainment held every Memorial Day weekend. In 2016, organizers broke the event in two, moving family-friendly activities and entertainment to a one-day event in April called Springfest, and pushing more adult-orientated fare of Riverfest to the first Saturday and Sunday in June.

Under the new format, Riverfest drew about 140,000 people last year, down 38 percent from 2015. This year, Riverfest reported attendance of 125,000 people.

Summer Arts

The Junior League of Little Rock produced the first riverfront festival in Murray Park in August 1978. The event, then called the Summer Arts Festival, featured the American Wind Symphony performing on a barge and was successful enough to inspire the creation of Riverfest Inc. to make the festival an annual event.

The following year, the name Riverfest flew over the event for the first time. The Junior League held the event at Murray Park until 1982, when it was moved to Markham and Broadway near Robinson Center Auditorium. A year later, the festival found its permanent home at Julius Breckling Riverfront Park, the first event held there.

The festival, set up as a nonprofit organization, operated without an executive director or paid staff until the late 1980s. A board of directors governed the organization, which relied on several committees of volunteers, most of whom were Junior League members.

In the late 1980s, Riverfest got its first executive director, Jane Rogers. Rogers worked with Riverfest for about seven years. Korte led the event for the past 13 years.

A portion of every dollar Riverfest made went to improvements at Riverfront Park or the River Market. The donations began in 1986, when Riverfest pledged $1,000 for the Belvedere in Riverfront Park. Later that year, the festival pledged $200,000 for the Riverfest Amphitheatre, donating the first $50,000 at the amphitheater’s groundbreaking in 1987.

The festival expanded to the North Shore Riverwalk in North Little Rock from 2002 to 2010. In 2009, the festival expanded to include the Clinton Presidential Park and library. 
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