Summer Camp Music Festival canceled for 2020 – Peoria Journal Star

CHILLICOTHE — Summer Camp Music Festival 2020, rescheduled earlier this year to the end of August from its traditional Memorial Day weekend run at Chillicothe’s Three Sisters Park, has been canceled.

Festival organizers hope to return to the park to celebrate its 20th anniversary next May. They had hoped in March that by moving the festival five months down the calendar to Aug. 21-23 would be enough time for the country to shed the the worst parts of the COVID-19 pandemic

Like optimists everywhere, they were wrong.

“This process has been a real roller coaster,” Ian Goldberg said Friday. Goldberg is the founder and director of the annual music festival “As little as three weeks ago we were extremely hopeful that things were going our way for the festival to happen in August. The numbers here in Illinois were going in the right direction and with the Governor moving up the opening of outdoor patios and beer gardens and moving us into Phase 4, things were looking good.”

Goldberg said the state would have had to moved to Phase 5 to allow the festival to continue in August.

“But the complete lack of leadership on a national level has lead to us being back in crisis mode nationally. And with us being a national event drawing our patrons from all over the country we could not responsibly move forward at this time,” Goldberg said.

The new dates are May 28-30, 2021. All purchased tickets will rollover and be valid for the 2021 event.

Refunds will be made available beginning on Monday, July 13 and continue through July 31, 2020. An email will be sent to all ticket holders on Monday explaining the procedure to complete by July 31st in order to refund your purchase.

“It is very unfortunate, but we look forward to being back in May, hopefully with this behind us, and finally celebrating our 20th anniversary,” Goldberg said Friday.

Scott Hilyard can be reached a 686-3244 or by email at shilyard@pjstar.com. Follow @scotthilyard on Twitter.