Thirteen may be an unlucky number for the 12th Street Music Festival.
City council recently approved a request from organizers of Uptown Live to allow that street festival to be held on Saturday, July 23, 2016 – a day before the 13th annual 12th Street Music Festival. The decision came after Uptown Live organizers appeared before the city’s festivals committee – something the 12th Street Music Festival organizers didn’t have a chance to do.
Neil Douglas, a member of the West End Business Association, said he was disappointed and surprised when he picked up the Oct. 29 Record and read about discussions taking place at city hall that would impact the 12th Street Music Festival.
“I think the process was flawed and I think we need to revisit,” he told council Nov. 2. “To continue and allow the decision that was made without us would be disrespectful of our festival. It would be very disrespectful of our volunteers and disrespectful of our sponsors, and would add challenges to our festival.”
Douglas said having two festivals on the same weekend poses challenges for retaining sponsors, stretches the city’s resources to clean the streets beforehand and forces the festivals to compete for vendors and volunteers. He said food vendors tend to like to do one event a weekend and take the other day off, so they’d likely go to the larger Uptown Live event.
“Compounding all of this are some mischaracterizations of our festival. It almost sounded like some people were characterizing us as being a little block party or something. We are not a block party,” he stressed. “We have brought some of the top professional bands in Vancouver to our event over the years. We have had Juno-award winners.”
Amber Anderson, president of the West End Business Association, wrote to council asking that the city not allow Uptown Live to conflict with the longstanding 12th Street Music Festival.
“The West End Business Association strongly believes that this will have a negative effect on our festival and may very well cause us to terminate our event,” she wrote. “We ask that you permit us the same access they received to present our concerns to the festival grant committee.”
Council approved a recommendation to invite West End Business Association representatives to attend the next meeting of the festivals grants committee.
Mayor Jonathan Cote said the 12th Street Music Festival promotes the neighbourhood, the street and businesses – and brings some great music to the area. He said there are a “limited number of weekends” in the summer and a lot of demands for dates.
“I’d hate to see them pitted against each other,” he said of city festivals. “These types of events are supposed to be positive, community-building events. I know a decision was made at the last meeting. I certainly think our festivals grant committee would be more than open to continue to have a dialogue and see what opportunities the city can move forward to support the work of the 12th Street Music Festival so that it can continue and hopefully thrive in the future.”
