Harriet Island home to new music festival

Editor's note: this report comes from MPR's Chris Roberts:

The City of St. Paul has landed what's being described as a 'national destination' music festival. St. Paul's Harriet Island will be the site of the as yet unnamed event this summer. The global promotions company "Live Nation" is partnering with the city of St. Paul to produce the weekend festival, slated for June 23rd and 24th. St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman says the city hopes to attract as many as 40-thousand people to the festival.

We haven't gotten a headliner yet but it's gonna be a first class music festival. It could be some rock, it could be some country, it could be a combination of things but Live Nation has an incredible reputation for being among the best in the industry, great producers, and I'm sure it's going to be an incredible event.

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Coleman says the upcoming festival will have multiple stages and a local music component.

At least as we stand right now there'll be a couple stages, so we think that there'll be opportunities for local music to be part of it and we hope that that actually will be a critical piece of it.

This year St. Paul went without a summer festival for the first time in nearly three decades after it dropped the financially struggling "Taste of Minnesota" in 2010. It will add to an already busy summer of live outdoor music events, including "Rock the Garden," the "Basilica Block Party," and an outdoor festival at Parade Athletic Fields in Minneapolis, organized by the nightclub First Avenue.