Birthplace festival aims to remedy past woes

Cora Scott: Organizers want to eliminate barriers so businesses can benefit from festival.

Organizers of the Birthplace of Route 66 Festival invited downtown business owners to a meeting April 22 to outline solutions they are pursuing with this year’s event, scheduled for Aug. 8-9. The meeting came about following objections shared last year by downtown business owners about disruptions the festival has caused their businesses.

Cora Scott, Springfield’s director of public information and civic engagement, serves as the festival director, and she convened the meeting with about two dozen people in attendance, held at the Discovery Center.

“We understand that there is a big concern when you bring 65,000 people into a concentrated area like Springfield’s downtown – that creates some barriers,” she said of the annual festival attendance. “We’ve been working to eliminate those barriers and come up with ways to maximize the opportunities for people who live and work downtown during the festival.”

Scott outlined a number of changes, from a change to the festival’s road closures and footprint to strategic placement of classic car displays, that are intended to minimize disruption to businesses and coax attendees to visit them.

Twenty-two downtown business owners signed a letter in October outlining their issues and asking organizers to work with them to find solutions.

“While we understand events such as this can be beneficial to our community and are meant to bring people together, this particular event has unintended consequences on small businesses that can no longer be ignored,” the letter stated. “Since the event began, we have experienced a negative impact on nearly every business in the downtown area. This has not only affected our daily operations but also our overall revenue and ability to serve our customers.”

The letter said business owners have “seen road closures occur earlier each year, causing a drastic reduction in customer traffic and sales.”

Among those businesses whose owners signed the letter were bars, like MudLounge, 417 Taphouse and Best of Luck Beer Hall; restaurants, like Nonna’s, Civil Kitchen and Prairie Pie (which has since moved out of the festival space); and service-based businesses, like the now defunct Systematic Savings Bank, Gavin Bolin Hair & Style and Scorpion Ink.

Solutions outlined
Scott told meeting attendees that following the letter, she embarked on discussions with many of those who had expressed concerns.

“I do want to say that I’m sorry for any challenges that you’ve had as a result of this. It’s completely unintentional, and we will do better – and we are doing better,” Scott said.

She outlined the changes in store for this year’s festival:

• There will be no Thursday night block party – a kickoff concert – to start the festival. “We want to shorten the festival, because an extra day means an extra set of road closures and the challenges that go with that,” Scott said, adding those funds will be invested into more entertainment.

• The Aaron Sachs Main Stage will be moved from the intersection of McDaniel Street and Jefferson Avenue to the area of the Discovery Center. “What that does is that opens up McDaniel and Jefferson to the rest of downtown and encourages that foot traffic from the festival on down Jefferson and even out to Walnut,” she said.

• Walnut Street will be closed at the recommendation of business owners in discussion with Downtown Springfield Association Executive Director Rusty Worley. “I was gobsmacked when I heard we want to shut Walnut, because I thought less street closures would be better than additional footprint,” she said. However, the need is to condense the festival footprint to keep the traffic in a smaller area to convince people to visit businesses.

• The festival footprint is being pushed to the west to the Expo Center, and classic car displays will not extend all the way down St. Louis Street, but they will be kept closer to the city’s center.

• “We are removing barriers for downtown businesses to participate, either in front of their business or as a vendor booth within the festival,” she said, noting there will not be a cost to businesses to participate. She added that businesses have been offered booth space in the past, but she heard from businesses that this poses an additional challenge: “You’re blocking off access to my business, and then you’re expecting me to have to staff another thing,” she said.

• Music is being expanded, with stages on the square and by the Discovery Center, but with the Rotary Rendezvous Stage, formerly located in the Expo Center lot, pushed to Kimbrough between Hold Fast Brewery and the Shrine Mosque. “That Kimbrough access there I think is really going to activate,” she said.

• Downtown breweries will be spotlighted in beer sales. It’s a move that required the city to work through existing partnerships and legalities about serving alcohol at events. “It makes a ton of sense, right, to really highlight our downtown breweries?” she said. In two weeks, Springfield City Council will be asked to review the cap on the number of events involving alcohol downtown.

• Strategic placement of classic cars to attract visitors toward businesses is also in the works.

• The public safety action plan is being revised in the wake of high-profile incidents at special events throughout the country.

• Communication with businesses is being ramped up. “I want this to be a dialogue,” she said. “I want to really talk to downtown organizations so that we work better together moving up to August.”

Scott said it is the hope of organizers that they will reap benefits from the festival.

“We’re here to help you all figure out a way to maximize inclusion in the festival,” she said.

Business barriers
Tens of thousands of visitors sounds like a good thing for downtown businesses, but that’s not been the case, according to Anne Baker, owner, with her husband Clayton Baker – a signatory of the letter – of four downtown eateries: Finnegan’s Wake, Civil Kitchen, Tinga Tacos and J.O.B. Public House.

In an interview following Scott’s presentation, Baker said her business Civil Kitchen, located right on the square, does better than most.

“Even if you’re downtown and there truly are 65,000 people, there’s no reason why every single business downtown shouldn’t be busy, just because of the sheer number of folks down here,” she said.

But the difference between traffic at Civil Kitchen and Tinga Tacos, a short walk away on McDaniel, was night and day.

“They put everything in the center of the square, so from the square all the way down to the Expo Center is where they put everything,” she said. “They were basically taking everyone all the way east where nothing is located at, and so we’re stuck with all the inconveniences of the festival and none of the benefit from it.”

She said businesses are offered the opportunity to have a tent, but that’s extra work and expense.

She added that organizers may not realize that the musical artists they choose for shows and the vintage car fans tend to be from an older generation.

“They sit by their cars all day long with a cooler of food, like ham sandwiches or whatnot and drinks, and they don’t come inside and check out any of the local places. They obviously want to watch the cars,” she said.

Last year on Saturday, Baker said a car show was held on South Avenue in front of Finnegans, and that business was busy.

“All it took was that little element of adding a car show down South to really make the difference of creating that flow with people checking things out,” she said. “They’re only going to go where things are. You can’t blame them.”

Baker said the festival also brings in professional food trucks from out of state.

“If they’re going to eat corn dogs and hotdogs and whatnot, they’re not going to go to a local restaurant by any means,” she said. “They have a self-sufficient event in the middle of our place, and all our regulars stay away because of the crowds.”

The perception, Baker said, is that 65,000 visitors stream into local businesses.

“They just don’t,” she said.

Baker and Carol McLeod, co-owner of Hold Fast Brewing, have been working with organizers to fully explain the issues and generate solutions, according to Scott, who thanked them for their honest input and time commitment during the meeting.

Concerns remained for some of the business leaders who were present at the meeting.

Gary Thomas, owner of The Regency Live music venue on Park Central East, said he was still digesting the information.

He added that his business was not necessarily negatively impacted by the festival, but he has some opinions about how to better plan the event.

“We look at the event differently because that’s our industry,” he said.

He said a lot of cities make the mistake of not reaching out to the industry to ask what can be done.

“Just like when it’s something as simple as porta-potties, they don’t go build their own porta-potties; they hire a porta-potty company,” he said. “Springfield has not been doing that. They think that anybody can throw a party, but there’s a lot more to this industry, that they’re recognizing – and they’re not working fast enough.”

Thomas said he is coming to the table now with a willingness to help.

“The mechanics of how to run an event is more than just they’ll build and they’ll show up – even when they don’t build it correctly,” he said. “That’s what they’re finding out.”