Organizers of the Breakaway Music Festival say the two-night celebration of electronic dance music outside Allianz Field drew some 24,000 patrons last weekend to the first major music event since the soccer stadium’s opening in 2019.

The stadium area’s inaugural rave-style music festival also drew its share of noise complaints from residents as far away as Mendota Heights, including the Trudeau family, who figured the amplified sound “might be cheeky neighbors having a party. We could hear it indoors even with the television on — especially on the first night.”

While some neighbors east and west of the festival grounds barely heard the DJs, residents south of the stadium appeared to have an unsolicited front-row seat because of the way sound travels, which can be highly dependent on weather, speaker positioning and other variables. Ramsey County emergency dispatch received some 200 noise complaints last weekend, most of them likely linked to the stadium.

In a written statement this week, festival organizers promised “further sound engineering studies to improve upon the layout of our event, hopefully mitigating more of the impact to local residents” before a “hopeful return to St. Paul in 2025.”

Some St. Paul residents welcomed the arrival of so many visitors to the Midway, and called non-soccer events on the grounds well overdue after five years of limited economic activity in the United Village space outside and around the stadium itself.

Jarrod Fucci, president of Breakaway, issued a statement this week calling St. Paul’s event the largest Breakaway Music Festival of the season to date. Some 6,000 pounds of waste were diverted “through robust recycling programs, and unique to our event here in St. Paul, an event-wide composting program.”

The event team, he said, amassed the equivalent of more than 200 hotel nights, 90 flights and dozens of rented vehicles, and “we partnered with local vendors for event infrastructure like restrooms, fencing, barricade, tents, etc. and featured local food trucks around the event property.” There were also after-parties at local bars.

As for the sound, he said sound engineers will examine the positioning of stages, as well as start and end times to “optimize the event for both attendees and the surrounding community.”

“Breakaway prioritizes listening to the community and we hear their feedback regarding the amplified sound,” he continued. “We look forward to engaging with them as we plan our hopeful return to St. Paul in 2025.”

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