Southeast residents want to chase Calgary music festival right out of their neighbourhood

Residents raise a stink over Chasing Summer Many residents in two Calgary communities are upset over electronic music festival Chasing Summer. Alesia Fieldberg reports.

It’s the third year for Chasing Summer, an electronic music festival in Calgary, but many residents in the area are upset over the disruption the event is having on their lives.

The festival runs in the parking lot of the Max Bell Centre and brings in around 15,000 people every day.

Every year the concert has been on, residents say concertgoers who use their neighbourhood streets as parking lots and their back alleys as bathroom stalls.

“I have friends that attend this festival, I even attended it the first year. I am all about culture and festivals and exciting things happening in our city. I just don’t think this is the right venue for this,” said Melissa Villaseca who lives right nearby the Max Bell Centre.

She says there are a number of reasons that the concert should find a better location to set up.

“People park over the entire neighbourhood of Albert Park and Radisson. We’re just overtaken with accidents, drunk driving, garbage, people urinating on public property and it’s just crazy, it’s dangerous and it’s not safe.”

It’s not just the concertgoers themselves that are the problem. Villaseca says the performance itself is too loud and causes too much noise because it is practically right outside her front door.

She says that the issue has even gone beyond simply a noise issue, it’s a problem because her whole house is moving.

“Last night we had an incident where a picture fell off of the wall because it was vibrating so much. You just can’t escape that. There’s nothing you can do.”

She says that she has brought up the issue a number of times with Councillor Giancarlo Carra but most of the time she says she feels ‘swept away’.

“Nothing is dealt with. Its three years in a row. We bought this house before this festival took place. We didn’t come into this neighbourhood knowing that these were the types of things that go on here.”

Villaseca feels that the city would be more adamantly against letting a festival like Chasing Summer into a residential neighbourhood in any other quadrant of the city.

“I don’t know if they’re thinking about how residential this is. I can sit on my front porch and see the singer on the front stage. I can hear every word he says as he addresses the audience including all the swear words.”

Nathan and Allen Nicholas, who have attended Chasing Summer every year it’s been in Calgary says there are concerns to be had, but they aren’t limited to just this event.

“At any music festival, that is a problem for every place,” Nathan says about the lack of washroom facilities. “It happens all the time. We went to EDC in Vegas and it’s the same situation.”

The brothers are among the good ones who attend Chasing Summer. They say that when they have to go; they hold it and hope for the best.

As for a different location for Chasing Summer both Allen and Nathan say they would go somewhere else if the event was indeed bothering homeowners.

“Everyone in the festival is pretty nice. I don’t think want to do that too. With a situation like this, it’s kind of hard to control that,” says Nathan.

Ward 9 councillor Giancarlo Carra, who is out of town, said that he shares the resident's concerns.

Event organizers were unable to comment on the issue on Sunday.

(With files from Alesia Fieldberg)