Leveraging special events

Curtis comic strip by Ray Billingsley, 4/20/2009, frames 2-4.

Special events are somewhat controversial in the revitalization world, because too often the event doesn't generate business for individual merchants, which is supposed to be the whole point about bringing people to a commercial district.

See "East Boston festival sidelined by rising costs," from the Boston Globe, which states:

Richard Lynds - executive director of the East Boston Foundation, a trust that supports community organizations - said the festival is no longer a benefit to businesses in the community. He said that a majority of the businesses that participate are not from East Boston and that hardly any of them reflect the Hispanic flavor of the largely immigrant community.

"If you are going to look to the East Boston Foundation to support your organization . . . then your organization needs to involve East Boston businesses," said Lynds, whose foundation has provided more than $100,000 in grant money to Italia Unita over about 10 years.

When I read this, my first reaction (although it took me a few years to realize this, and the realization hit me during a presentation by Carolyn Dellutri of Illinois--she's one of the best experts on "retail business promotion" in the Main Street world) was, the point isn't to not fund the festival, it's to figure out how to best leverage the presence and opportunity of the festival, in order to get prospects into the businesses, and to convert prospects into customers, and then to have a plan in place to turn first time customers into repeat customers, all in advance of the staging of the event.

This piece from the Ann Arbor Business Review, "Main Street Area Association director: Downtown businesses strategize to take advantage of Ann Arbor Art Fairs," discusses this basic idea, in the context of the Ann Arbor Art Fairs, which are arguably either the #1 or #2 street art fair in the country (they vie with the St James Court Art Showin Louisville for the title of #1). From the article:

Ann Arbor is in the midst of preparations for the annual Ann Arbor Art Fairs, an event that local businesses view as a priceless opportunity to market themselves to the roughly 400,000 people that descend upon the city for four days in mid-July.

Through years of trial and error, most downtown businesses have a strong plan in place to reach their target market and establish relationships with visiting fair goers that will go on long after the last artists close their booths on July 18.

Artscape, the street art fair in Baltimore is this coming weekend (we're going on Sunday, and will go early and take in the Baltimore Farmers' Market as well, which I consider to be the best farmers market in the Baltimore-Washington region). I don't think they've done this before, but the nation's best practice resident attraction program, Live Baltimore, is sponsoring walking tours-open houses in the Station North neighborhood abutting Artscape. From their website:

Artscape - visit for a weekend, stay for a lifetime

If you like visiting Artscape, America’s largest free arts festival, you may want to consider living there. There are open houses on Saturday and Sunday from 12-4pm daily, sponsored by the Central Baltimore Partnership. Walking tours of the area are also offered at various times through the weekend and leave from the Station North Arts & Entertainment District booth, 1700 N. Charles Street at Lanvale Street. List of featured houses.

In the past at Artscape, the Baltimore Dept. of Transportation has lent one of those highway LED signs to the event, and it ran the message: If you lived here, you'd be home now." And I have always been impressed how Baltimore Government agencies and affiliates such as Live Baltimore, the Dept. of Neighborhoods, the Office of Promotion and the Arts, the Dept. of Recreation and Parks, the Highlandtown Arts District, and the city's Red Line transit project leverage the power of Artscape to promote their activities. (Arlington County does this also at the Arlington County Fair. One complete row of booths in the indoor exposition hall is of various county agencies, making themselves available to citizen inquiries, and explaining what they do.)

The house tours take it up a notch. (If I made more money from consulting, I definitely would buy a house in Baltimore for investment and historic preservation purposes.)

What we need to do as "revitalizers" is be sure to work with each "brick and mortar" business to create a "plan" for them to benefit specifically from the attendees at neighborhood/district special events.