By Michael Bushnell
Northeast News
December 2, 2015

KANSAS CITY, Missouri — Kansas City’s biggest one-day neighborhood music festival could be coming to a Northeast neighborhood near you next year.

According to Porchfest organizer Kathryn Golden, the one day festival has outgrown its host of the past two years, the West Plaza Neighborhood. Because of rising attendance and logistics issues, she added, what originally drew the music festival to West Plaza has now become a liability.

“We just need some bigger spaces to handle the larger volume of people who attended the festival,” Golden said.

Last year, Porchfest was held on a rainy Saturday in June. Once the rain cleared, over 5,000 people enjoyed over 30 bands on front porches scattered throughout the West Plaza Neighborhood. Next year, with the pending move, the festival dates could be rescheduled to early October.

So which neighborhood in the Northeast wants to play host? Two do, actually. Leslie Caplan and Jessica Ray, presidents of Scarritt Renaissance and Pendleton Heights Neighborhood Associations, respectively, both believe their neighborhoods would make an excellent home for the festival and allow expansion opportunities for the coming year.

“Northeast certainly has the porches as well as the additional space for parking,” Caplan said. “The area near the Kansas City Museum in Scarritt would make an excellent venue.”

Ray agreed, adding Pendleton Heights would be up to the challenge of hosting the event.

“Porchfest is exactly the kind of homegrown event we love,” Ray said.

Golden indicated that response had been overwhelming following the article in The Pitch about the change in the festival’s venue. However, the desire is to keep Porchfest in Kansas City’s central corridor.

“In that vein, we’re looking at four neighborhoods seriously, two of which are in Northeast,” Golden said.

Golden did not indicate which other two urban neighborhoods are being considered, but both Hyde Park and Volker Neighborhoods have expressed interest in hosting the festival. A decision could come as soon as January 2016.