The 2011 City Lights Downtown Festival will be shorter and more focused on food and music, the Commerce Downtown Development Authority has decided.
Tricia Massey, chairman of the DDA’s Promotions Committee, announced the changes for the June 25 festival at the DDA’s Feb. 23 meeting.
“Taking comments from all of our events after them, from vendors and others, this is what she came up with,” Massey explained. “City Lights will no longer be an all-day event.
“Vendors weren’t making their money until late afternoon,” Massey explained. “People were coming out for the last two bands."
The event will still feature a 5K road race in the morning, however, and fireworks at dusk, but the activities in Spencer Park will basically be from 6:00 to 9 p.m. Three bands will be solicited to play during those hours.
Massey said local restaurants will be invited to offer food, and local nonprofit groups will be invited to sell refreshments as fund-raisers.
The late May event usually coincides with hot weather, and one of the realities of previous festivals has been that the crowd is okay in the morning immediately after the road race, but drops off considerably very quickly until late afternoon. By evening, when the crowds began arriving in anticipation of the fireworks and the temperature moderate, some vendors have already closed up shop.
Fortunately, food vendors who stick around usually do a brisk business during the last three hours of the festival and, in some years, have sold out of food. The new schedule aims to reduce the festival to those peak hours.
