PLAINFIELD, IL — A summer staple for some time, Plainfield Fest will not be returning this July, Mayor John Argoudelis confirmed to Patch.
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The weekend-long event, last held July 15-17, 2022, has experienced turbulence over the last several years. In 2021, organizers nixed the beloved carnival portion of the festival that drew in throngs of couples and families with children alike.
The Plainfield Riverfront Foundation, which hosted the festival as a fundraising effort, cited a lack of space for the rides. In 2022, the carnival once again did not return.
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In 2020, the annual fest was disrupted due to COVID-19 and restrictions that forced its cancellation.
Without a carnival, the main attractions of Plainfield Fest became the Midwest Bags Tournament, food trucks, a beer tent and live music.
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“The Plainfield Riverfront people came to us earlier this year,” Arougdelis told Patch, “and said they barely made any money on it last year — they only made $15,000 — [and] that they had trouble the last couple years finding the right venue to host the carnival part, which has been a nice money-maker for them. … That limited them, so for all the work and effort put into it to make just a little bit of money, it didn’t make sense for them to continue it.
“They said they wanted to take a hiatus and reexamine what comes next. … Personally, I think Plainfield Fest has kind of run its course. … It kind of devolved into just a beer tent and some local music without any real theme or what it really wanted to be.”
The festival “is not and never has been” a village-sponsored event,” Argoudelis said.
“We’ve always lent tremendous support to it, financial, manpower, policing, all of that, public works, we’ve always supported it,” Argoudelis said. “It is a town festival.”
It most recently served as a fundraiser for the Plainfield Riverfront Foundation, an organization created in 2009 to support Electric Park and revitalize the DuPage riverfront. In March 2021, the Plainfield Village Board approved the development of the riverfront and adopted a new 10-year master plan.
Although the Riverfront Foundation was at the helm of Plainfield Fest for the last several years, it wasn’t always the organizer — the Plainfield Park District once hosted the event, too.
“Perhaps taking a hiatus and reconfiguring and rethinking what our town’s premiere festival should look like, it’s a good time to do that,” Argoudelis said.
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