City of Aurora Awards New RiverEdge Park Music Garden Programming & Management to ACCA

The Aurora City Council voted last night to award the Aurora Civic Center Authority (ACCA) an 18-month agreement to provide programming and venue management services for the new RiverEdge Music Garden and John C. Dunham Pavilion, a premier regional festival park currently under construction in downtown Aurora along the banks of the Fox River.

The RiverEdge Park project is being constructed by the City of Aurora, the second largest city in the state of Illinois, through a combination of grants and donations from the State of Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, the Fox Valley Park District, the Kane County Forest Preserve District and the John C. Dunham Foundation.

Based on outdoor entertainment facilities already built at Summerfest in Milwaukee and Millennium Park in Chicago, the RiverEdge Park Music Garden will serve as a dynamic new cultural events destination in the Western Suburbs. Located on the east side of Fox River between New York Street and Illinois Avenue, the facility will boast a performance pavilion with state-of-the-art acoustics and a capacity of approximately 9,500.

According to the intergovernmental management agreement approved by the Aurora City Council Aug. 28, the Aurora Civic Center Authority (ACCA) will be responsible for the daily operations of RiverEdge Music Garden as well as the production, presentation and coordination of the program calendar for the John C. Dunham Pavilion. ACCA already serves as the management firm for downtown Aurora's historic Paramount Theatre.

"The ACCA management team has proven it has the expertise required to attract and program a wide variety of national, regional and local music acts," said Aurora Mayor Thomas Weisner. "With the Paramount's extensive ties within the community, including our ongoing partnership with the Downtown Alive! outdoor music festival series, we are confident this agreement will make the RiverEdge Music Garden a source of community pride. This world-class facility situated along the Fox River will serve as an economic catalyst for the future growth of downtown Aurora for years to come."

"We thank the City of Aurora for placing its confidence in the ACCA, and we look forward to leveraging our deep contacts in the music industry to program and present a jaw-dropping line-up of summer entertainment sure to attract excitement, audiences and dollars to downtown Aurora," said ACCA Executive Director Tim Rater, who also manages the Paramount Theatre in downtown Aurora. "We also feel like RiverEdge Park and the Paramount serve the same goal - to bring people to downtown Aurora. We've been very successful at that this last year at Paramount and we want to keep doing that with RiverEdge."

Just this past weekend, the Paramount Theatre presented sold-out performances of the Happy Together Tour on Aug. 24 and Alison Krauss with Union Station on Aug. 26, and two sold-out concerts starring country legend Willie Nelson last April. Additionally, ACCA took over programming for Aurora's Downtown Alive! summer outdoor music series the past two years, booking headliners like Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Shemekia Copeland for Blues on the Fox in June, the Village People for Retro on the Fox in July, the Charlie Daniels Band and the Georgia Satellites for Jam on the Fox in August, and Buddy Guy in 2011.

The premiere event at the RiverEdge Music Garden is scheduled for June 14-15, 2013 with Aurora's annual Blues on the Fox Music Festival. Moving forward, RiverEdge will serve as the new, permanent venue for an expanded slate of the Downtown Alive! outdoor festival series. Music fans throughout Chicagoland can look forward to a wide variety of live music events throughout the season at RiverEdge Park, including rock, pop, country, classical and jazz acts. The venue will also host local performing arts productions.

Conveniently located adjacent to the Metra station at the Aurora Transportation Center, the Two Brothers Roundhouse restaurant, the Hollywood Casino and the Paramount Theatre, the Music Garden is only the first phase of a larger, 30-acre RiverEdge Park project. The new regional festival park will feature wetland and urban wildlife areas, expanded public park space with direct access to the Fox River, bike paths and other public amenities. RiverEdge Park will be open year round and will serve as a model of cutting edge and innovative sustainable environmental practices including products, programs and technology.

For more information on RiverEdge Park, visit the City's website at www.aurora-il.org.

 

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