The festival got its start back in 2014. When Jeff and Swain started the event, it centered around craft beer. But as the festival grew, they wanted to change the focus to attract a variety of sponsors. The Hyde Park Summer Fest is a celebration of Chicago’s South Side, Swain explained.
“The interaction just from the community has been great with thousands of views and interactions on our personal pages, the Fest pages, personal phone calls, with people saying that they are going to fly in and make sure that they don’t miss this comeback,” Jeff said.
In 2020, Jeff and Swain canceled the festival for the first time because of the COVID-19 pandemic. They planned to bring it back in September 2021 but wound up canceling it that year too because of the increasing risks of COVID-19 under the delta variant. They made this choice amid controversy around the city of Chicago announcing plans to still host Lollapalooza 2021 as COVID-19 cases were on the rise last summer.
“We just made a decision that it was more important to protect the people’s health who were coming to the fest versus anything else we were doing, and it was completely our decision. We made the decision ourselves to not move forward, and we think it was the best decision to make at that time,” Swain said. He’s the owner of Kimbark Beverage Shoppe and he’s also thrown his name in the race for the Illinois 1st Congressional District seat, in which longtime U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush isn’t seeking re-election.
Jeff and Swain are working with an external team and the city of Chicago to advise them on COVID-19 protocols and are currently monitoring state and local COVID-19 health and safety protocols.
On Feb. 28, Chicago lifted its COVID-19 mitigations, including mask and COVID-19 vaccine requirements. However, the mandate will remain in place in Chicago Public Schools (CPS) buildings, hospitals, long-term care facilities, congregate settings such as prisons and shelters, and spaces governed by other guidelines like public transportation and daycares.