Summati n Weekly
USPS Publication Number 16300
THE
T h i s C o m mu n i t y N ew s p a p e r is a publication of Escambia / Santa Rosa Bar Association
Section A, Page 1
Vol. 16, No. 21
Visit The Summation Weekly Online: www.summationweekly.com
June 1, 2016
Call It A Night By Josh Newby
It has been over a month now since the April 12 decision and public reaction has been predictably mixed. Reception of the news has been characteristic of many opinions surrounding Gallery Night for the past several years, as the event has grown in popularity and spurred policy and infrastructure changes that have propelled downtown forward but rubbed many the wrong way.t It has not always been like this, of course. The “street party,” as it has been disparagingly called, started in 1991 as a quiet evening a couple times a year where the focus was art, wine and hushed acoustic and jazz music. Andy Witt, executive director of the Arts Council of Northwest Florida, thought it would be a great idea to partner with local galleries while bringing some attention to the downtown area. Similar events had served as both a cultural and economic catalyst in places like Nashville, Charlotte, Savannah and other peer and aspirant cities. The DIB was one of the first sponsors of the event, along with eight participating galleries. The affair was held three times a year to coincide with Spring Break, July 4 and the Blue Angels schedules. Gallery Night was a middling success, drawing between a hundred and 300 art-connoisseurs over the first couple of years. As more bars and restaurants emerged downtown, the average age of attendees began to drop as music and socialization eclipsed art and culture as the event’s primary focus. The DIB took over planning and facilitation of the event soon thereafter, and eventually the board elected to expand Gallery Night to 12 nights a year and continue the street closure until midnight, even though there were funding and budgetary concerns. The thought was that the traditional 5 to 9 slot would remain an artcentric festivity, while 9 to midnight would be more of a Bourbon Streetstyle street party for college-age and young adults. With the expansion came an increased economic impact and business for bars and restaurants downtown, even as various galleries and retail spaces grew increasingly alienated with the development. “They only come down for the drinks and to browse but not buy any art or merchandise” was a frequent complaint at the DIB Special Events Committee meetings. The conflict came to a head in 2015 when funding troubles reached the public’s attention. Between police, insurance and other infrastructural and administrative needs, each Gallery Night cost about $8,500 to conduct. While some of this was
raised via sponsorships and participation fees, more and more businesses were participating without fronting any of the cost. Official participants dropped from an average of 35 to just eight over the course of several months. With no funding mechanism in place—and no enforcement available for the current fee structure— the board decided to call it a night. “The event has served its purpose,” said John Peacock, chairman of the DIB. “It has become something else entirely. We don’t want to wake up Saturday morning and find out streets littered with trash. We don’t want to constantly struggle for funding. To be honest, this conversation started over a year ago.” Peacock said he was happy with the decision, that this was an opportunity for the DIB to get back to its roots of removing commercial blight, enhancing property values, encouraging economic development and so on. He also said that, while the DIB is ending its facilitation of Gallery Night, he plans for the board to start a new event in the spring of 2017 that focuses more on the arts, an original objective of the event. “The DIB isn’t going to do nothing; it just isn’t going to do this,” said Peacock. “We did a survey and 50 percent of businesses said there would be no negative impact from removing Gallery Night. I was at a rotary meeting and asked people to raise their hands if they’d miss the event. Not a single hand went up. I don’t think very many people are upset.” The indirect effect of Gallery Night tells a different story. More than 15,000 people crowded downtown each event evening, 92 percent of whom were residents and 8 percent of whom were visitors. “The City and the DIB don’t realize the larger impact of what goes on,” said Joe Abston, owner of Hopjacks and The Tin Cow, two bars/ restaurants that experienced record profits on Gallery Night. “It’s a good night for the bars and restaurants, sure, but there’s also a lot of people who plan their regional trips based on Gallery Nights. This is a bigger event than just people in the streets. I would argue Gallery Night made Downtown what it is today, it rejuvenated things, and people don’t remember what those times were like.” Abston went on to say that there’s an element of classism in this decision—that the decision-makers want only high-brow individuals to enjoy what Downtown has to offer. The event’s primary patrons were those ages 35 to 44, followed by the 25 to 34 crowd. The average household income was $52,783 and around 90 percent of people routinely cited a
positive experience with the event. The individuals enjoying the party were not what one might consider typical of debauchery and drunkenness, but the problem stemmed from how they spent their middle-class income. The average individual would spend about $85 per night on food and drinks, but just $37 on retail (art, jewelry and clothing purchases). In all, total spending in Escambia County on Gallery Night often reach over a million dollars. While this understandably disenfranchised many of the retailers and galleries who were the original beneficiaries of Gallery Night, some of these more traditional stores did quite well. Jim Sweida, former chairman of the DIB’s special events committee and part-operator of Blue Morning Gallery, reported that his gallery was successful on these nights because he knew how to market it. Sweida believes that the DIB did not market the event properly and impress upon downtown retailers the value of bringing 15,000 potential customers to their doorsteps every month. “There are too many 10 to 5 businesses downtown,” said Sweida. “Gallery Night should’ve encouraged these retailers to stay open and take advantage of the tens of thousands of people, but instead they don’t know how to use it to their benefit. Maybe if they did, we wouldn’t have a funding problem.” Peacock assessed a fundamental conflict between what Gallery Night should have been for DIB purposes and what it seemingly became—a street party that Pensacolians actually wanted. “Gallery Night did some very good things, but it also did some bad things,” said Peacock. “It was a bad atmosphere and a bad im-
age for the city, especially into the later hours. So we’re going to look at what we did well and take away the bad things and hopefully have a great event not called Gallery Night starting next year. If the street party was so important to the Downtown businesses, they would’ve written checks, but they didn’t.” This does not have to be the end of Gallery Night as we know it, though. But, while Peacock has encouraged private enterprise to take over the responsibility and facilitation, many do not see that as realistic. “I don’t think a private takeover is going to solve the funding problem,” said Abston. “The retailers don’t see the value, but they certainly benefit from the value of increased awareness.”
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For now, the DIB will focus on holiday lights, beautification and other aspects of Downtown life on which there is broad consensus. As Gallery Night sunsets and the glow of holiday lights takes it place, the conversation will likely continue for many months. Peacock encourages individuals to participate in board meetings, held the second Tuesday of each month, and Special Events Committee meetings, held the second Wednesday of each month. “It’s sad,” said Abston. “The DIB used to be a place where you could come up with big splashes and talk about big ideas for downtown. Now it’s a place where we talk about holiday decorations.”