Council member Shields asks about the city's interests in the coming Freedom Festival barbecue war

City Council member Justin Shields has some questions about the news this week that the Freedom Festival intends to launch its own RibFest to go head-to-head with the city-owned U.S. Cellular Center's long-established, annual BBQ Roundup.

At this week's council meeting, Shields asked if was true that the Freedom Festival had its own plans to go “in direct competition” with the BBQ Roundup.

“I need more information,” Shields told City Manager Jim Prosser. “Where did they get the authority to do such a thing?”

Shields noted that the Freedom Festival seemed to have scheduled its RibFest on city property in and around Greene Square Park “to go in competition with something the city is involved in.”

“So I'm going to need some information,” he said.

Prosser noted that the Freedom Festival, a private entity, had not yet submitted a request for the required city event permit, and Prosser added that the city must approve private events.

On Friday, Scott Schoenike, the director of the city's three entertainment venues – the U.S. Cellular Center, Paramount Theatre and Ice Arena – said the BBQ Roundup's four-day run last summer generated about $34,000 in profit for the operating budget of the U.S. Cellular Center. The center pays a nominal fee to the Freedom Festival to be part of the festival event, he said.

As recently as 2006, the BBQ Roundup generated $60,000 in profit, but rain in 2007 and then the flood and post-flood in 2008 and 2009 lessened revenues, Schoenike reported.

Schoenike said he tried last summer to hold the BBQ Roundup downtown even as the downtown had begun to rebuild from the 2008 flood. One spot that proved unworkable was the Greene Square site, he said. The BBQ Roundup is slated to return downtown next summer on the city's Park-and-Ride lot on Eighth Avenue SE.

In the current fiscal year, the City Council has awarded the Freedom Festival $90,000 from the city's annual hotel/motel revenue.