At first, nobody wanted Riot Fest to be in Humboldt Park-not even Riot Fest.
"I was against, initially, taking Riot Fest outside," said Michael "Riot Mike" Petryshyn, the festival's founder and managing partner.
And when representatives of the event-which formerly was held throughout the city in venues like the House of Blues, Cobra Lounge and the Double Door-first approached Ald. Roberto Maldonado (26th) about moving the 2012 festival to a permanent home in Humboldt Park, he wasn't so sure either.
"At the beginning, I was very, very reluctant," Maldonado said. "Just the name of 'Riot,' Riot Fest in Humboldt Park, that in itself caused me the creeps, you know? I didn't need none of that stuff here."
Riot Fest got pushback from supporters as well.
"People were like, 'Oh, are you crazy? It's Humboldt Park,'" Petryshyn said. "It had such a bad reputation at the time."
Just a couple of years later, Riot Fest, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this weekend, has grown hugely popular-and Humboldt Park has become a hot commodity.
The traditionally Puerto Rican neighborhood was named one of Redfin's Top 10 Hottest Neighborhoods in the U.S. this year. Median home sale prices are up a whopping 62 percent since last year, according to the real estate brokerage website.
"I would call it an up-and-coming neighborhood," Redfin agent Greg Whelan said. "Ukrainian Village, Wicker Park, Bucktown, Logan Square, those neighborhoods, the [property] values have been high for a while, and there's less land available there, so developers looked to cheaper land that's immediately adjacent."
Alejandro Molina, secretary of the Board of Directors at the Puerto Rican Cultural Center, has had a front-row seat to the gentrification in his neighborhood.
"Thirty, 40, 50 years ago, no white people wanted to come in, and certainly no yuppies," Molina said. "Now, all of a sudden, it's condos, and it's not for us."
Gentrification, Molina asserts, is an act of violence, pushing out lower-income minorities in favor of more affluent white professionals without roots in the community. He has seen that pattern with older residents being persuaded to sell their homes.
"There's an overwhelming pressure, I think, about change," he said. "Look at your California [Avenue] corridor. To me, that doesn't bode well. These people, they hide in their trendy hipster stores, but there's no sense of themselves being in a community."
Jose Lopez, executive director of the cultural center, said preserving ethnic diversity in the city should be a priority.
"I cannot tell anyone where they should or should not live," he said. "However, I think that if there is a historically defined area, that you would want to respect that and that you would want to look and validate what it has created, rather than coming and erasing it."
A music festival that features mostly white acts and brings thousands of outsiders into a tight-knit minority neighborhood would seem to accelerate Humboldt Park's rapid change-but Molina, Lopez and Maldonado all said that's not necessarily the case.
"Ever since they came, the organizers have really attempted to engage the community," Lopez said. "They've made a lot of dialogues [with] different organizations, they have engaged some of the businesspeople here. I think that's the way to go about doing the kind of intersections that need to take place."
Petryshyn said his team made a deliberate effort to engage with local leaders about the festival, and he had one particularly strong selling point: He and his business partner are neighborhood residents.
"We have a vested interest," he said. "Residents in Humboldt Park know us. It's not like we're hiding behind a stage; I walk down the street."
Petryshyn also said Riot Fest works closely with neighborhood groups, but declined to say exactly how.
Maldonado confirmed that his office, in conjunction with Riot Fest, gave away 500 Thanksgiving turkeys to needy families last year. He said he knows of other community work Petryshyn does, but would not elaborate.
Riot Fest's effect on the neighborhood is mostly economic, in Maldonado's view. Festgoers patronize local businesses along the Division Street corridor throughout the weekend.
Besides, he said, the gentrification process in his ward began years before Riot Fest set up shop.
"When we went deep into the recession, Humboldt Park was just getting there in terms of gentrification," Maldonado said. "It was fast-going, fast-paced. And the recession stopped that like it stopped almost every neighborhood. I did know it was going to be a temporary rest, and it was going to come back sooner or later. I foresaw that Humboldt Park would be one of the fastest ones to turn around because of the trend that I had seen before the crash."
But Whelan, the real estate agent, said that Riot Fest raises the neighborhood's profile among young people significantly.
"It attracts the younger generation, the people who are the Millennials," Whelan said. "The Millennials are in that park, the Millennials are comfortable there. The Millennials are eventually going to be buying houses [there]."
The influx of young white people could go two different ways, according to Molina. Some contribute to gentrification without respect for those who are established in the neighborhood. Molina recalls seeing one transplant who made papier mache protest art and drove a car with an Obama bumper sticker.
"This young man is probably left of center, he's probably anti-war, he's probably college-educated, yet he has no clue that he's contributing to the displacement of a community," Molina said.
And then there are new faces such as the Riot Fest group.
"Before they did anything, they actively looked for community organizations to have the discussion with," Molina said. "Did we say, 'No, you can't come here, this is an all-Puerto Rican neighborhood'? No, this is the kind of partnership we want to engage."
Petryshyn said he hopes his neighborhood doesn't turn into the next Lincoln Park or Wicker Park.
"I'm hoping that there's going to be a delicate balance where it doesn't lose the history of the neighborhood or the flavor of the neighborhood," he said. "A lot of that comes from the Puerto Rican community. I don't want to see their businesses, their cultural centers move, because it's paramount that neighborhoods that have their ethnic backgrounds don't change."