2020 Custer Fair Moves From Evanston To Indiana

EVANSTON, IL — After nearly half a century in Evanston, the Custer Fair is relocating to northwest Indiana, organizers and city officials announced Wednesday. Fair organizers blamed increasing fees and a lack of support from the city. Evanston's mayor and city staff suggested the organizers failed to meet their financial obligations and still owed money to the city from last year.

"We hate that after 48 years it has come to this. Custer [F]air is a historical event in Evanston. It is a very heart breaking decision," said Custer Fair organizers Steve and Tammy Szostek, in a social media post. "We are very excited that we are moving to Whiting Indiana right on the lake. With a city that is very supportive to help make this a great event."

A statement on behalf of the city expressed disappointment in the move. It said city employees had long supported the street fair with public safety personnel, event promotion, traffic management and food inspection.

"However, in recent years, several leadership changes at Custer Fair have resulted in instability," it said. "Non-profit partners have reported not receiving their fair share of donations from the event, despite spending their Father’s Day weekend working there, and the [c]ity has not been reimbursed for the many hours of staff time and resources necessary to make this event possible."

In a follow-up post, Tammy Szostek also attributed the move to fallout from the city's decision to deploy a mobile command van at last year's fair. She said criticism over the van and city officials' intent to impose more fees made it "near impossible for the fair to survive." Szostek said the city already received about 70 percent of the festival's revenue in various fees.

The appearance of the Cook County unified command post at the 2019 fair, where it was used to block traffic, drew criticism because of complaints its logo resembled that of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, and could be intimidating to visitors. The backlash from the incident led the Cook County Board of Commissioners to rename its emergency management agency from the Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management to the Department of Emergency Management and Regional Security and replace its logo with something less reminiscent of the federal immigration enforcement agency.

The van was used last year because city required organizers to either install expensive gates or rent vehicles from the city for crowd control, Szostek told the Chicago Sun-Times. She said attendance at the event fell from a record 122,000 people in 2018 to fewer than 10,000 in 2019, acknowledging the fair still owes $3,500 of the roughly $30,000 in annual fees it pays to the city.

In a social media post, Mayor Steve Hagerty said he was hopeful that local business groups would help create a successor to the Custer Fair in the future.

"Personally, I have many wonderful memories of this great street fair and will miss it but I'm confident we have The Main-Dempster Mile and Chamber of Commerce that is diligent and creative enough to help us re-envision another fair in Southeast Evanston," Hagerty said.

"Bottom line," Hagerty told the Sun-Times, "the city can't be in the business of subsidizing private-sector losses."

"I have tried reaching out to the mayor for months with no return to any of my messages," Szostek said. "Putting on such a huge event does not happen over night so we had to come up with a decision and fast. Indiana was not our first choice for a new location. I did reach out to other surrounding communities again no reply."

The fair began in 1972 on Custer Avenue. It was founded by John Szostek, father of Steve. The fair is a program of Piccolo Theatre, also founded by the senior Szostek. He retired as executive director after it changed its name from Custer's Last Stand to the Custer Fair in 2014. The two-day fair last year featured hundreds of local and regional artists, multiple music stages and a kids carnival around the intersection of Main Street and Chicago Avenue. This year's festival is scheduled for June 20 and 21 in Whiting, Indiana.