The Blackbelt Benefit Group’s Riverfront Park Music and Arts Festival was deemed a success, but it could have been more successful if everything went according to plan.

An estimated 500 people attended the Labor Day event throughout the day, which started at noon and ended around 7:30 p.m. after the Dirty Dozen Brass Band headlined the concert at the newly debuting amphitheater.

Clay Carmichael, co-founder of the Blackbelt Benefit Group, said the festival was hurt by a free event hosted by the city outside of the gate of the festival.

“I wish we would have a little more participation,” Carmichael said Monday. “Unfortunately, the city started a free entertainment [area] outside the gate, and so a lot of people weren’t coming in because they were going to that.”

Carmichael said the event was first discussed in February, and the city agreed to help out with the event by providing an area for children and fireworks after the concert.

“It is just really disappointing. I’ve been working with [the city] since February to trying to get this thing rolled out, and last minute stuff they just start putting this stuff out what they are going to do,” Carmichael said. “What’s wrong with working with us and doing it inside the gate and everything else like we planned? When you do things that late, it is hard to turn it around.”

Carmichael said the original plan was to have the city’s kid zone inside the gate of the event, which was free for children ages 12 and under, but last minute changes on the city’s side put the event outside the gate at Phoenix Park across from the St. James Hotel.

“We agreed on a 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. time, which at 5 p.m. all of our kid stuff was going to go down, and they were going to start at 5 p.m., but they’ve been doing it all afternoon,” Carmichael said. “People would just come to the gate, ask how much it is and go back out and go to that [event].”

Admission to the festival was $10 and free for kids 12 and under. Carmichael said the event was aimed to give people a great concert at a reasonable price with free admission for children. Carmichael said the event hurt their participation as well as local vendors that were set up inside the festival.

“If there are local vendors here, there doesn’t need to be a competition out there that the city is running hurting everybody else. We’ve got four or five groups together that are working with this organization,” Carmichael said. “If they would have involved all of that with us, we probably would have had the money to pay them for all the stuff we were asking them to waive at the city council meeting a few weeks ago.”

The Blackbelt Benefit Group asked the city to waive the fee for using the amphitheater because they provided fencing and sound equipment for the amphitheater.

Phone calls to Councilwoman Angela Benjamin, who helped coordinate the city’s One Hot Summer Series were not returned Tuesday. The Labor Day festival was included in the series schedule.

Besides the frustration of the city’s free event, Carmichael said everything went well. The festival started at 12 p.m. after the return of the Alabama River Raft Race. The concert featured Deadfingers, the John Bull Band, the Kenny Brown Band and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band in its musical lineup.