Editorial: Riot Fest’s exit to the suburbs is a blow to the West Side. It was preventable.

Riot Fest is an annual rock music event in Chicago that in most years garners headlines on which acts — often veteran artists who don’t tour all that often — will top the lineup. For the record, this year it will be Beck, Pavement, Fall Out Boy and Slayer. But the big news surrounding Riot Fest in 2024 is the festival’s surprise move to SeatGeek Stadium in suburban Bridgeview from Douglass Park in Chicago’s North Lawndale neighborhood on the West Side, which Riot Fest has called home since 2015.

The knotty narratives tied to Riot Fest’s departure have little to do with live music; instead, they traverse familiar Chicago issues such as neighborhood disinvestment, dysfunctional city government and the city’s lousy business environment, among others. Riot Fest co-founder Michael Petryshyn, better known as Riot Mike, blamed the Chicago Park District for the sudden move. Petryshyn told a story — punctuated by delay and “moving goalposts” — that surely is familiar to many who try to do business in Chicago.

Everyone has a breaking point, and Petryshyn hit his in his dealings with the Park District, which he blamed “solely” for the outcome. “I was tired of being misrepresented,” he said. “I was tired of seeing a community we have deep roots in not being attended (to).

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It was never an easy relationship. It always felt like the attitude was, ‘Little old Riot Fest, who cares?’” We’ll get to the Park District in a minute, but the first question.