With the rescheduled Cheap Trick performance next week set to close out downtown Aurora’s outdoor concert season, there’s no question it’s been a summer to remember at RiverEdge Park.
For one thing, the freshly-renovated and expanded venue was greeted with nothing but rave reviews, said General Manager Jim Jarvis – with praise coming for the new beverage pavilion and sky deck, stepped-terrace gathering place and redesigned southern gateway that connects the Fox River pedestrian bridge to a 7,000-square-foot plaza.
Also greatly appreciated by visitors was the increase in parking spaces and services for those who are disabled, not to mention those new state-of-the-art restrooms that include hand-washing stations with touchless sinks.
A highlight of the summer, Jarvis insisted, was getting to be an eyewitness to how families in particular were responding to this $16 million makeover that also offered a grassy viewing area where kids could run and play soccer while parents enjoyed the music via a trio of Jumbotrons and a far superior sound system.
“It was great to see people using it,” he said. “To me, watching it was everything we had hoped for.”
The same could be said for the enthusiastic response from the entertainment acts, which were treated to a beautiful 10,000-square-foot “artists’ building” that featured expansive eating and lounging areas, a balcony patio and five large dressing rooms with private showers. Grateful performers included the band A Flock of Seagulls, who “travel the world,” noted Jarvis, and rated the backstage accommodations as “by far the nicest facility” they had ever seen.
There’s no question the tour managers from this summer’s acts “talk it up to other acts,” he said, which in turn “will help us get more business.”
All was not sunshine and blue skies this season, however. The biggest challenge, it turned out, was having to play whack-a-mole with Mother Nature.
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Between Canadian smoke, relentless rain and an “unstable atmosphere” that led to so many pop-up thunderstorms, “there were only three shows that were not impacted” this season, said Jarvis, who admits to a newfound respect for meteorologists after he and many other officials from Chicago-area outdoor venues spent countless hours online with the National Weather Service discussing “what was coming and when it would come.”
“I feel like I could be a guest meteorologist because I’ve learned so much about the weather,” he said. “I now have total appreciation for what they do.”
It was, Jarvis added, “truly exhausting trying to predict then react” to what was happening. Those decisions included a couple of big postponements – the Beach Boys rescheduled to Aug. 21, 2027; Cheap Trick to Sept. 10 of this year – and the Aug. 13 evacuation of Gov’t Mule’s performance, just as the popular band was wrapping up its first act.
“Fans were already drenched from a torrential downpour,” but when it became apparent lightning would be hitting within eight miles, “that was our threshold,” Jarvis recalled. “The tour manager called it for the night.”
Jarvis was upfront about the anxiety level all this produced, admitting that monitoring the crazy weather was “harder than dealing with 7,500 people in the house.”
“At the end of the day, my job is to keep people safe,” he concluded, “so we are constantly having meetings, literally every hour on the hour for nine hours.”
Overall attendance, which was around 50,000, “was a little more than normal” but fell short of expectations because of the uncooperative weather, said Tim Rater, president of the Aurora Civic Center Authority, which oversees RiverEdge.
“We were hoping for better numbers,” especially with the addition of several FIFA World Cup viewing parties, he added.
Still, it became clear this season to Rater just how “well-suited the park is for festival-type events,” an idea that is already being explored for next year.
But before any plans for bigger fests take shape, there’s still plenty of activity on the RiverEdge calendar. A month after the park hosts the Fiestas Patrias celebration on Sept. 12 and 13, “we will start unloading for Christkindlmarket,” said Jarvis of the German holiday market that has been expanding in Aurora since opening in 2022. It will open for the holiday season at RiverEdge on Friday, Nov. 20.
For now, however, he’s just enjoying memories from a season “like no other” at the park. Among them, insisted Jarvis, was a notable increase in guests “dancing and singing together,” regardless of age or ethnicity.
“At a time like this,” he noted, “it’s so good seeing people enjoy themselves and just being with one another.”
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