Walking tacos, jerk chicken egg rolls, and Angus beef hot dogs are heading back to the Fort Ben Cultural Campus as the City of Lawrence gears up for its annual BBQ & Blues Festival on Saturday, September 12, running from 4 to 8 p.m. The free, rain-or-shine event is shaping up to be one of the year's biggest vendor showcases in the neighborhood, with roughly a dozen food businesses confirmed so far.
According to the City of Lawrence, Indiana - Government, this year's food lineup includes Tychinn Catering, Chef Manda's Bakery, Hoosier Philly Ice, It's Those Egg Rolls, R&R Extreme Wings, Foster's Café & Catering, Colonel Mustard Catering Inc., TwistedDaqs, RMY's Soul/Comfort Food Mobile Kitchen and Catering, MJ's Backyard BBQ and Catering, Sweets by Charlotte, Heavenly BBQ, and Terri's Tastee Treats. The city says it plans to announce additional vendors and the performance lineup as the date approaches. Attendees are welcome to bring lawn chairs, but organizers have asked that pets stay home given the crowds expected, per Visit Lawrence.
What's Cooking This Year
It's Those Egg Rolls is bringing its Soul Train Egg Rolls, stuffed with jerk chicken, Caribbean-spiced cabbage, seasoned rice, and cheese, a menu item the vendor bills as bold flavor with big vibes. Colonel Mustard Catering's booth will offer a full hot dog and sausage menu: a Corporal Angus beef hot dog for $5, a Sarge version for $7, and Wisconsin sausages including the Pulaski Polish sausage and the Schwarzkopf brat, both priced at $7. Walking tacos come in small ($6) and large ($10) sizes loaded with beef, chili, nacho cheese, onions, tomatoes, and sour cream, with chili and cheese available as a $1 add-on.
Sides at the Colonel Mustard stand include chips, soda, and water, each priced at $2. The vendor also lists an unusually wide range of accepted payment methods, including cash, credit, Cash App, Apple Pay, Bitcoin, rare coins, and precious metals. On the sweeter end, Sweetly Charlotte will serve chewy sugar cookies made with all-purpose flour, granulated sugar, salted butter, eggs, corn syrup, and baking soda, with the vendor noting the cookies contain milk and egg allergens.
A Venue Built From a Decommissioned Army Post
The festival takes place at the Fort Ben Cultural Campus, a venue built on the grounds of the former Fort Benjamin Harrison, which operated as an active U.S. Army post from 1903 until it was decommissioned in 1995. Its 2,500 acres were subsequently redeveloped into civic, residential, and commercial districts under the Fort Harrison Reuse Authority, a transformation widely cited as a national model for military base adaptive reuse.
The cultural campus itself traces back to a $5.85 million grant awarded to the City of Lawrence and the nonprofit Arts for Lawrence by the Lilly Endowment in late 2018, according to the Indianapolis Business Journal. That funding helped build out the campus's signature features, including interactive Musical Swings designed by the Montreal firm Daily Tous Les Jours, a 200-seat theater renovated from a 1929 military building, and a Visual Art Center housed inside a relocated former Army communications building, per Arts for Lawrence. The campus opened to the public in June 2021.
Fort Ben's Growth Spurt Continues Nearby
The festival grounds sit inside a corridor undergoing rapid change. Just outside the cultural campus, an estimated $80 million redevelopment known as The Benjamin is underway, a five-story complex planned to include nearly 250 luxury apartments and up to 25,000 square feet of retail space, with a late 2026 opening timeline. The project occupies one of the last undeveloped parcels of the former army base.
Adjacent to the cultural campus, Fort Harrison State Park covers 1,700 acres of former military land that were transferred to the state in 1996. The park draws nearly 900,000 visitors annually and features hiking trails, historic sites, and a 72-par golf course, according to the Indiana Department of Natural Resources.
City Leadership and a Returning Tradition
Mayor Deb Whitfield, who took office after winning election in November 2023 as the first female mayor of Lawrence and the first Black woman elected mayor in Marion County history, has continued to promote community events tied to the Fort Ben district. During her April 2026 State of the City address, Whitfield reported a 77% year-over-year decrease in homicides alongside new public safety funding, while also noting budget adjustments tied to state tax policy changes under Senate Bill 1, according to WTHR. The city recently lifted a temporary hiring freeze while maintaining fiscal reserves, per the same report.
Past editions of the festival have leaned heavily on regional blues acts, with previous lineups featuring groups like Mississippi Raglips and the River Dogs Rock and Blues Revue, Highway 9 Blues Band, and King Bee and The Stingers performing on the outdoor amphitheater stage. Vendor Foster's Café & Catering, run by Ivy Tech culinary graduate Chef Brady Foster, has become a familiar face at Lawrence community events; Foster represented Team Indiana at the 2023 World Food Championships after winning the TURN Festival's Perfect Bite Competition, according to Ivy Tech Community College. He launched his café inside Ivy Tech's Lawrence campus in March 2020 and more recently expanded to a food truck.
With the vendor list still growing and a performance lineup yet to be announced, this year's BBQ & Blues Festival adds one more chapter to Fort Ben's ongoing run of civic gatherings, joining recent events like the returning farmers market and January's USO Girls art installation at the cultural campus.
