Days after an electronic dance music festival rocked the lawn outside of Allianz Field in St. Paul, another festival promoter — this one an undergraduate at the University of St. Thomas — has approached the city with plans to host the “Forbidden Festival,” an eight-hour college music festival featuring at least one of the same performers at the same location in September.

Breno Bueno, the founder of FBDN Ventures, applied to the city this month for a sound level variance from 2 to 10:30 p.m. on Sept. 21, a Saturday, with a sound check beginning an hour earlier.

“We’ve united with Allianz Field to transform it into the ultimate Forbidden Ground, where the magic will happen!” reads a social media post from the “Forbidden Festival,” which has promised “an eight-hour open bar” and “an epic line-up.” The DJs, announced this month, include TimeTwoFly, who also performed at last month’s Breakaway Music Festival at Allianz Field, as well as Deg, Zella, JBroadway, Noe and Z.

Bueno describes himself on the platform LinkedIn as an undergrad at St. Thomas, with an expected graduation date in May of next year. He previously founded and ran a company called “My Beauty Pass” for about a year and a half in São Paulo, Brazil. He also runs Kurz, a smartphone app that facilitates the collection of NFTs, or “digital collectibles,” according to his LinkedIn.

On social media, Bueno said his festival is being co-produced by a Brazilian company known as GRPP Ventures.

He’s marketed his “Forbidden Festival” on the social media platform Instagram as “a revolutionary college festival in Minnesota, with the first-ever OPEN BAR! An emblem of freedom, Forbidden Festival is a dream for college students and a realm of unrivaled celebration. … Get ready for the BIGGEST OPEN BAR UNIVERSITY PARTY IN MN!”

He’s also promoting a sorority challenge, where the top five sororities selling the most tickets win 20 “VIP” backstage tickets to meet the performers.

Allianz Field opened in 2019 as a professional soccer stadium and the home of the Minnesota United, and some residents and business advocates have long waited for it to host other types of events and bring some badly-needed foot traffic to the visibly strained business corridor around Snelling and University avenues.

Still, the two-day Breakaway Music Festival on June 28 and 29 drew mixed reviews from St. Paul residents as far as Highland Park, as well as some suburban residents, some of whom said noise levels were so loud they assumed their next-door neighbors were hosting a party.

Breakaway organizers have said their electronic dance music blow-out drew 24,000 visitors, their best showing of the season to date, and they would re-examine sound levels, speaker direction and other details if they return next year.

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