St. Paul rallied to make Minnesota Yacht Club music fest its most rocking summer event

When flooding along the Mississippi River almost spoiled the biggest new music fest Minnesota has seen this century, St. Paul did what the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Joan Jett also did on Harriet Island last summer: It plugged in and started rocking.

“It was all hands on deck,” St. Paul’s Parks and Recreation director Andy Rodriguez remembered of the effort to salvage last year’s inaugural Minnesota Yacht Club festival.

“It was a bevy of different trades — cleanup crews, electricians, plumbers — all working together to make sure the park was ready. Everyone in St. Paul wanted the festival to happen.”

The hard work paid off. Harriet Island Regional Park will host Minnesota Yacht Club (MYC) again this weekend with a promise of greener pastures, literally and figuratively.

Organizers added a third day of music for the festival’s second year and are enjoying a near sell-out demand for tickets. About 35,000 attendees are expected each day, Friday through Sunday, for a 30-act lineup that includes Green Day, Hozier, Fall Out Boy, Sheryl Crow and Weezer.

While its bigger twin city has seen music festivals such as the Basilica Block Party and Rock the Garden sidelined in recent years, St. Paul now can officially stake claim to the Twin Cities’ biggest, trendiest music event of the year.

“The businesses and everyone here are loving it,” said Visit St. Paul president Jaimee Lucke Hendrikson. “It’s bringing in so many new people who we know are going to fall in love with the city, or fall in love with it all over again if they’re not new.”

Mayor Melvin Carter voiced his enthusiasm for Year 2 of the MYC fest in his State of the City address in April and social media posts trumpeting the added third day.

“60,000 people attended the two-day Minnesota Yacht Club Festival,” he bragged on social media.

“Our hotels were booked, restaurants and bars were full, and downtown was bustling. We just wish it was longer. Well, don’t threaten Saint Paul with a good time.”

St. Paul was actually looking for a good infusion of summertime visitors and revenue when city staff first showed the event’s organizers at C3 Presents around Harriet Island in 2022. A Texas-founded events company, C3 specializes in major festivals within city parks, including Chicago’s Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits.

“I’d say we were mutually excited,” C3 promoter Tim Sweetwood said of the wooing process between the city and his company.

“We’re always looking for new markets. When we approached them about this concept, they were very excited and gave us open arms.”

Sweetwood’s own enthusiasm spiked once he saw Harriet Island. His team was so smitten with the site, they came up with the festival’s peculiar name (“to playfully emphasize the riverside setting,” he said). And they enlisted the historic Jonathan Padelford riverboat as a floating VIP area.

A scenic strip of waterfront property across the Mississippi River from downtown St. Paul, the park had been the site of many big music events in previous decades — including Taste of Minnesota in the 2000s, the touring Lollapalooza festivals in the 1990s and the old Riverfest lineups of the 1980s that hosted the likes of Whitney Houston and Stevie Ray Vaughan.

However, Harriet Island had sat untouched by major concert promoters for the past 15 years except for one bold but failed attempt: River’s Edge, a festival that Live Nation launched in 2012 with a purported $5 million investment, five-year commitment and a lot of city resources. A C3 partner, Live Nation canceled River’s Edge after one year.

The MYC fest thus arrived last year with tinges of skepticism among city staff and businesses but that seems to have washed downriver this year.

“We were busy all weekend and are anticipating a similar level of activity this year,” said Jarret Oulman, co-owner of the Amsterdam Bar & Hall in downtown St. Paul, who loved seeing festgoers stay at nearby hotels and stick around all weekend.

“Summer is hard downtown. There are fewer touring acts coming through the indoor venues. So having a great weekend is very helpful.”

Visit St. Paul representatives are still measuring how much money the festival brings into the city, but Lucke Hendrikson described it as “millions of dollars in direct and indirect economic impact through the weekend.” She said hotels in and near downtown are reporting near sell-out capacity, and restaurants and bars are staffing up for an influx around the festival’s hours (noon to 10:30 p.m.).

“And there’s a whole extra day of that this year, too,” she cheered.

A good indicator of how businesses feel about the fest: When Yacht Club representatives from C3 were invited to answer questions at Visit St. Paul’s monthly MyVSP meeting with local business leaders last Friday at the Minnesota Children’s Museum, about 90% of their members turned out for the meeting — “unheard of for the middle of summer,” Lucke Hendrikson said.

Josh Secaur, co-owner of downtown’s Gambit Brewing Co., not only liked the increase in business he saw off last year’s fest, but also the mix of newcomers.

“It was a nice way to get some new faces in the taproom and really be able to showcase our vibe,” Secaur said, citing “a wide range of generations and backgrounds. That was super cool to see as well.”

St. Paul’s parks and rec department will reap some rewards, too. Rodriguez estimated that the department made more than $100,000 just in permits and fees off the festival last year. C3 also helped pay for post-flooding cleanup. In a normal year without flooding issues, he expects to share in profits from ticket revenue.

C3 staff, in turn, sees many fruitful years ahead after working with the city through last year’s challenges.

“The parks department was probably the best part about working with the city,” Sweetwood said. “I think they were as excited as we were. They really accommodated the needs for a festival like this.”

The MYC fest could just be the start (or restart) for Harriet Island, Rodriguez said, with the site apparently now seen as something of a rock star itself again for prospective concerts and events.

“Last year’s festival did prompt other event organizers and promoters to reach out to us about other possible events on Harriet Island,” he said. “We’ll see.”