Summer concert-goers hoping to catch a free outdoor performance in the Twin Cities have any number to choose from — including the St. Paul Jazz Festival’s many shows in and around Mears Park this weekend.

But along the iconic Mississippi River, it’s slim pickings.

With a handful of exceptions, there isn’t much in the way of music this summer at the Harriet Island Clarence Wigington Pavilion or the Raspberry Island amphitheater.

It’s not for a lack of effort, according to St. Paul officials.

“I thought we were going to be the next Coachella,” said St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman, recalling a city-led effort to bring top national acts to the riverfront five years ago.

After drawing Tool and the Dave Matthews Band to Harriet Island for the River’s Edge Music Festival in 2012, Live Nation pulled the plug and abandoned the planned concert tradition the following year.

“I think they got overextended,” said Coleman, who lays some blame on previous administrations. “We had invested a lot of resources to set that up. When Harriet Island was redeveloped (in 2000, for $14 million), the infrastructure to support these things wasn’t. They built a stage that’s absolutely of no use to any group coming in.”

It’s an ongoing frustration for concert promoters and fans alike.

“There needs to be a discussion — does St. Paul use Harriet Island for concerts or not? Right now, it’s being used for weddings and private things,” said Twin Cities Jazz Festival organizer Steve Heckler. Heckler brought Festa Italiana to Harriet Island for two years.

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Sept. 30 is last day for public comment on Pigs Eye Lake makeover “I think it’s the most beautiful place to do a concert in St. Paul. I personally would love to do more events down there,” he said. “It’s absolutely spectacular. (But) it gets difficult getting there.”

In St. Paul, some blame parking and access issues below the bluff.

Others say St. Paul’s riverfront locations lack the housing density needed to allow patrons to trip across a free concert at a place like Raspberry Island, which sits just below Kellogg Boulevard, a major downtown thoroughfare.

Nate Krantz, a concert promoter who serves as the general manager of First Avenue in Minneapolis and the St. Paul Palace Theatre, thinks both arguments are overstated. Krantz blames unpredictable drainage issues, as well as competition from weddings and 5K fun runs.

St. Paul and Minneapolis don't have as many big blow-out festivals and concerts on the Mississippi as they once did. Rate the riverfront: — FredMelo, Reporter (@FrederickMelo) June 19, 2017

“With all the races that are scheduled, really it’s hard to find open dates on weekends,” he said. “There’s a balance issue.”

Another reason? In St. Paul, city organizers are actively steering shows elsewhere.

Virtually all of St. Paul Parks and Recreation’s free summer concerts take place farther inland at downtown’s Mears or Rice parks or at Como Dockside, the privately managed pavilion near Como Lake.

“Our focus has been enlivening downtown and getting events that aren’t just destination events,” Coleman said.

St. Paul officials say they’re as committed as ever to “activating” the river with happy hours, fitness classes and future kayak rentals, but not necessarily through large, splashy headline concerts.

“If you’re going to do an 8,000- to 10,000-person event, CHS Field is gated, it’s got seats, it’s got vending, and it won’t flood,” said Joe Spencer, the city’s arts and cultural director. “And when you come out of there, you’re going to fill up our small businesses.”

Spencer said the city is open to hosting events that will draw 25,000 to 50,000 people to Harriet Island, but he doesn’t go out courting them.

On the islands, “the bandshells are there, and those are nice pieces of infrastructure, but almost everybody builds an adjoining stage,” Spencer added. “You’ve got to bring in power, you’ve got to fence it in. (Harriet Island) wasn’t designed to be a festival grounds. It was designed to be a park.”

‘GREAT RIVER PASSAGE’ EFFORT

While St. Paul, Minneapolis, Roseville and other metro cities are generous with their summer offerings, not all amphitheaters, lakeside pavilions and riverfront bandshells are programmed the same way. Several riverside sites are now mostly dedicated to weddings and private fundraisers.

Even a moored downtown St. Paul showboat built for theatrical performances has gone dark.

Formerly known as the Minnesota Centennial Showboat, the 1899-style riverboat replica that has sat alongside Harriet Island Regional Park since 2002 held its final performance in the fall of 2016.

Previously managed by the University of Minnesota’s theater department, it was sold last year to St. Paul Parks and Recreation for $1. City officials are still contemplating how to program the space.

A handful of intimate “Music in the Parks” events this summer venture into less obvious locations, such as the Old Highland Pool House or Hidden Falls Regional Park, both near the river.

“I look at the river as the whole 17-mile stretch,” said the mayor, who foresees a nature center someday at Crosby Farm Regional Park.

Nevertheless, four years after the St. Paul City Council approved the Great River Passage Master Plan — a blueprint to draw more visitors to St. Paul’s 17 miles of Mississippi River — the city’s sizable waterfront performance spaces remain underused for performances. Instead, a long series of privately managed charitable events such as the “Polar Plunge” and “Fast and Furry 5K” are held each year below the bluffs.

“The minute the schedule for Wigington Pavilion is published, it’s booked,” the mayor said.

In Minneapolis, public and private organizers present river-based events such as the Stone Arch Festival and Red White and Boom on July 4, which each draw 80,000 people, as well as the Aquatennial celebration, which draws 100,000 people.

Coleman noted that redeveloping the Wigington Pavilion to accommodate large concerts would cost the city millions of dollars. And the only way to recoup that money would be to have half a dozen or so large shows each summer, which would surely upset the neighbors.

“To do that for two weekends a year?” Coleman said.

OTHER PROBLEMS

Heckler said the orientation of private real estate development along the river, such as apartments and condos, makes performances difficult.

“When you try to get a permit, that’s one of the things they point out to you. You have to build a stage pointing in the other direction,” Heckler said.

Meanwhile, the pavilion sits just a couple feet off the ground — too low to serve as anything better than a secondary stage, anyway.

“As far as being able to use that stage, that’s not even on our production list at all,” Heckler said. Meanwhile, the island’s location requires drawing the right kind of audience willing to walk in from downtown and forgo other amenities.

“If I do a jazz thing with an older demographic, I now have to rent shuttle buses. There’s limited parking,” Heckler said. “And it’s not really a city vibe. There’s no coffee shops right there, no retail. It feels isolated to a lot of people.”

In both St. Paul and Minneapolis, lakeside locations surrounded by greater housing density have drawn consistent crowds, at least in recent years.

LAKESIDE SITES

In South Minneapolis, the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board hosts free summer concerts at the Lake Harriet Band Shell seven days a week and twice on Sunday. Ragtime, bluegrass and barbershop quartets are allotted concert times between free outdoor movies and nuptials.

At Como Lake in St. Paul, privately scheduled music and movies roll out this summer almost nightly at the Como Lakeside Pavilion, and all but a handful are free.

A few summer festivals still land close to the river water, such as the popular and elaborate Irish Fair that returns to Harriet Island with ticketed and nonticketed events on the weekend of Aug. 11.

But notable downtown riverfront traditions such as A Taste of Minnesota or the July Fourth fireworks have dried up as concerts at Mears Park and CHS Field in Lowertown or the city’s new downtown Palace Theatre gain a following.

“Music in Mears” enjoyed the largest opening of its 14-year history when 2,000 visitors swarmed the park on June 8. The Twin Cities Jazz Festival is centered in Mears from June 22 to 24.

“There were a lot of big shows at Harriet Island back in the day,” said Whitney Clark, president of the Friends of the Mississippi River. “In Lowertown, you’ve got the ball field and the restaurants, and the downtown workers. It’s weird because Harriet and Raspberry are not that far. They’re just across the bridge.”

A Taste of Minnesota last landed on Harriet Island in 2010, and then went on hiatus before a short-lived revival. Flooding on Harriet Island forced the Taste to relocate to Waconia, Minn., in 2014, where it returned for a curtain call in 2015.

The downtown St. Paul fireworks haven’t been held at Harriet Island in years. They’ll be held at CHS Field on July 4.

For examples of the city’s subtler commitment to the Mississippi, Spencer points to the arrival of Red River Kitchen, a restaurant inside a riverfront grain elevator, and a new weekday Happy Hour series in Kellogg Park, just off Kellogg Boulevard at Robert Street.

“The Kellogg Craft Beer Overlook is a way to activate the river,” he said. “The everyday stuff you can do is a better activation than the one-time blow-out festival.”

Harriet Island will host a few small- to medium-sized festivals this season on a monthly basis, including Art Start’s EcoArts Fest and a Burger Battle held in May, the Brunch-A-Palooza fest on June 3, the Wanderlust Yoga Festival in July, the Irish Fair in August and the Energy Fair in September.

Raspberry Island is hosting multiple performances of a live lesbian-themed musical — “The Pirates of Penzance” — for Pride Weekend, with musical sets from the One Voice Mixed Chorus.

Throughout the summer, Raspberry Island will also show five free water-themed films, such as “Jaws” on June 29 and “Finding Nemo” on July 20.

“I love the two islands,” said Connie Shaver, a marketing and communications consultant with the Twin Cities Jazz Festival. “I had great hopes for Festa Italiana (which spent two years on Harriet Island). The infrastructure is there; let’s use it.”

BIG RIVERSIDE PLANS

Public and private organizers in Minneapolis and St. Paul say they have no shortage of strategies for “activating” the underutilized areas of the Mississippi River, though some ideas are coming together more readily than others.