Ribfest organizers give themselves high grades
The Naperville Exchange Club is giving itself high grades on this year's Ribfest, with officials saying the expanded layout was a success despite minor hiccups.
Chairwoman Julie Lichter was at Knoch Park Monday morning taking down signs and rated the group's execution of the four-day holiday bash a B+ or A-.
"We want our neighborhoods and communities to come out and have a marvelous time and I think we did ourselves proud," she said.
She believes the event attracted record crowds, but won't know for sure until all the calculations are done.
The Fourth of July weekend festival includes music, food and dozens of children's activities. It typically takes place on the north side of Knoch Park and also uses some of the adjacent land owned by Naperville Cemetery.
This year, however, the cemetery needed its land back so the Exchange Club expanded into the south side of the park.
Lichter said sticking to the north side would have dropped the capacity by about 10,000 people and based on the crowds over the weekend, the park may have been forced to close each day.
Instead, using both sides increased capacity to 60,000 - about 20,000 more than usual.
"We just didn't feel it was acceptable for our community to go backward when we had an opportunity to go forward with this event," Lichter said. "Obviously our community came out strong and they loved the event."
Lichter said LeAnn Rimes and Sammy Hagar were two of the biggest draws.
Patrons complimented the club on the extra elbow room this year and also liked the large high-definition screens at both stages.
However, some of the ribbers were unhappy they weren't in the same location they had been for the past decade. Some also did not like having the food booths split between the north and south sides of the park.
Lichter said the club started handing out coupons to draw people to the south side vendors. Fest-goers, she said, liked being able to get ribs on both sides so the club will have to find a balance to please both groups.
The club also plans to look at other ways to tweak the layout for next year.
Proceeds from Ribfest go to groups that fight child abuse and domestic violence. Last year the group raised $773,000. Of that, $550,000 went to nonprofit groups and $110,000 went to Project HELP, the Exchange Club's own program that provides parent mentoring services.
"We've created an opportunity here to just continue a legacy of ... a great Fourth of July celebration in our community," Lichter said. "I'm really looking forward to see how we fine tune it and continue to raise millions of dollars to help our community."