Mo Pop Sunday, including Tame Impala

Brian McCollum | Detroit Free Press

There were high hopes for West Riverfront Park as a Detroit concert hotspot when the 22-acre expanse was cleared and opened to the public in 2014.

But with the park set to undergo a $55 million makeover that will rule out large-scale events, its most high-profile annual tenant — the Mo Pop Festival — has been quietly hunting for a new home.

The fest’s producer now has a spot in its sights: As Mo Pop 2019 wrapped up Sunday, a representative with AEG Presents said he is close to locking down a property where the festival can move next year and likely settle in for the long haul.

“We’ve found a new location we feel good about,” said Jason Rogalewski, the concert company’s regional vice president. “It accomplishes our goals — to stay downtown and stay on the river.”

Junfu Han, Detroit Free Press

AEG has been working with the City of Detroit, the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy and Mayor Mike Duggan’s office to secure a new space, he said.

“They all want to keep this in the city,” he said.

Rogalewski declined to identify Mo Pop’s targeted site, saying a lease has not been formally signed and details are still being ironed out. He hopes to complete the deal in coming weeks and start booking artists for 2020.

Junfu Han, Detroit Free Press

Mo Pop fans and artists grew fond of West Riverfront Park. The site offers a unique Detroit setting: It's alongside the water with picturesque backdrops of the city skyline, the Ambassador Bridge and Canada — and a touch of urban grit via the old U.S. Post Office next door.

“I think this is probably the most beautiful place I’ve played,” 25-year-old Phoenix singer-songwriter Alec Benjamin said Saturday from Mo Pop’s main stage.

Construction will begin next year to transform the space into the Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Centennial Park — named for the late philanthropist and Buffalo Bills owner whose foundation is funding the project.

Scheduled to reopen in 2022 with an array of structures and amenities, the park will lose the vast open space that has accommodated events such as Mo Pop and this summer’s River Days festival with Smokey Robinson.

“Will there be room for events on a much smaller scale? Sure,” said Marc Pasco of the riverfront conservancy, which maintains the Detroit RiverWalk and its associated properties. “But it won’t lend itself to large events like it does now.”

Rogalewski said Mo Pop's proposed site — about the same acreage as the current footprint — won’t change the production’s essentials. The two-day festival typically has presented a couple of dozen artists on a pair of stages, along with food trucks, concessions, art displays, specialty tents, games and other attractions.

“The core features will be in place — the same number of bands, two stages, no overlapping sets,” Rogalewski said. “Pretty much everything will be the same.”

Unlike West Riverfront Park, the proposed space would not accommodate onsite parking. Rogalewski said he isn’t concerned: In Mo Pop’s five years downtown, fans have increasingly used other parking and transportation options anyway, he said.

Junfu Han, Detroit Free Press

Building a name

Since moving to Detroit in 2015 after two years in Sterling Heights, Mo Pop has grown annually while cultivating a distinct identity on the summer calendar, attracting open-eared young fans for long days of rock, hip-hop and other sounds. Billing itself as a boutique festival with an emphasis on indie music, the festival has featured established headliners — Modest Mouse, Bon Iver, the National — along with acts on their way up, including Billie Eilish last year.

This weekend’s installment drew an estimated 33,000 attendees over two days for a lineup that included Vampire Weekend, Tame Impala and a homecoming performance by breakout pop-R&B star Lizzo.

West Riverfront Park was a promising new festival spot when it was refurbished by the conservancy five years ago. With its open fields and riverside vista, the site initially enticed Live Nation, the Ilitch organization and other promoters. Along with Mo Pop, early events included Jimmy Buffett, the Downtown Hoedown and an R&B festival hosted by Kem.

While conservancy officials welcomed the shows, they were quick to stress that the park was conceived first and foremost for everyday use by residents. Concerts and festivals were just “a punctuation mark,” conservancy president Mark Wallace told the Free Press in 2015.

Junfu Han, Detroit Free Press

At any rate, not every concert producer remained sold on West Riverfront after that initial flurry of events. Serious drainage issues were revealed by a 2015 downpour that earned the site the nickname “Lake Mo Pop”; a year later, dry heat turned it into a dust bowl.

The “desolate" surroundings near the park, as one promoter described them, led to safety concerns for some prospective event organizers, and the lack of onsite infrastructure proved to be a hurdle for events staged from the ground up.

“It’s an undertaking to do something there that can be done cheaper at other places,” one music-industry executive told the Free Press.

There aren’t many alternatives. Few spots within the city limits have the space or accessibility for festivals such as Mo Pop. At Belle Isle, where Metallica held its Orion rock fest in 2013, state officials have soured on mass gatherings.

Junfu Han, Detroit Free Press

Still, eclectic events such as Mo Pop — big and small — are crucial to the city’s culture, said Adrian Tonon, who works in the Duggan administration as Detroit’s Night Time Economy Ambassador.

Tonon was backstage Saturday with a group of young Detroit artists and entrepreneurs he’d assembled to get a glimpse behind the scenes of a major production.

“In terms of community impact, Mo Pop has been incredible. We’re working with them to keep them in the city of Detroit,” Tonon said. “To keep the creative economy strong, we need these festivals here.”

Contact Detroit Free Press music writer Brian McCollum: 313-223-4450 or bmccollum@freepress.com.