Downtown First Friday events planned for November start

Would you make a point to visit downtown to partake in a giant dance party? How about to see a digital light show, or watch the mayor officiate a wedding in Five Points Park?

City leaders are hoping the answers are yes. On Monday, the City Commission voted unanimously to approve funding to support a recurring event on the first Friday of the month, set to include closures on Lemon Avenue and State Street as necessary. The city is teaming with the Downtown Improvement District to organize the event series, which will launch in November under the branding “Fresh Fridays.”

Commissioners were enthusiastic about Fresh Fridays as an opportunity to give residents something to do and a mechanism for attracting customers to downtown businesses.

“I think this is something that would help jump start energy and enthusiasm downtown,” Commissioner Kyle Battie said.

Those involved with launching the Fresh Fridays events are emphasizing the experimental nature of the first few installments and approaching the project with a flexible mindset. The first event will be centered on a street closure from 8-11 p.m. that uses the same footprint as the Sarasota Farmers Market. That plan didn’t come together until a few days before the City Commission meeting, emerging out of a discussion between City Manager Marlon Brown and representatives for the Downtown Improvement District.

At one point, the Downtown Improvement District favored a vision for Fresh Fridays that didn’t involve any street closures at all. The city isn’t abandoning that concept: In December, officials plan to put on a decentralized holiday event that divides downtown into four different zones with distinct theming. Joe Grano, a marketing consultant the Downtown Improvement District hired to help organize Fresh Fridays, described the approach as an “Epcot-style experience.”

Brown said the city would evaluate how the first two events went before making firm decisions on future programming. Grano and Downtown Improvement District board member Chris Voelker said input from merchants and residents would guide the future of Fresh Fridays.

“The goal here is to learn,” Grano said. “We don’t have all the answers.”

Commissioner Jen Ahearn-Koch expressed some concern about the planned hours and the inclusion of a street closure, questioning whether merchants and residents would support the plan. Some downtown businesses expressed opposition to the city’s original plans for First Fridays, which called for a street closure on Main Street between Orange Avenue and Palm Avenue. Voelker said the Downtown Improvement District had reached out to merchants, who indicated they would be more amenable to a smaller road closure that did not affect parking  on Main Street.

Voelker said the events would be planned in a manner that was sensitive to residents living nearby, but she felt 11 p.m. on a Friday was a reasonable cutoff time.

“[Residents’] main concerns were that it not be too loud and not be too late, whatever it is,” Voelker said.

The rest of the commission was unreservedly enthusiastic about the events. Battie said he felt downtown was in need of invigoration, and he expressed hope that Fresh Fridays could make Sarasota a destination for people throughout the region.

“I don’t want to be saying, ‘Let’s go to St. Pete for First Friday,’” Battie said. “I want people from St. Pete saying, ‘We should go to Sarasota for Fresh Friday.’”

Commissioners Hagen Brody and Liz Alpert said they were confident Fresh Fridays would benefit downtown merchants because, even if businesses weren’t open or customers didn’t shop during the events, the series would put more eyeballs on storefronts, creating opportunities for future patronage. Alpert and Voelker were hopeful businesses would make a point to stay open to be a part of the events.

Brody said he supported the 8-11 p.m. timeframe because he thought it covered a broad range of people interested in participating in events like this — on the front end, those looking for an evening out on the town, and on the back end, individuals seeking late-night entertainment.

“I don’t care what age you are, people enjoy the social scene,” Brody said. “This is a social city.”

Also at Monday’s commission meeting:

• The board agreed to remain open to receiving private offers to purchase the Fillmore Drive parking lot on St. Armands Circle despite questions about how the cost of constructing a public parking garage might affect the sales price.
  
  Multiple commissioners indicated they would not be interested in entertaining an offer in which the city did not profit from the sale of the lot to a private developer, which City Attorney Robert Fournier said was a possibility depending on the valuation of the property.
  
  “If they can’t come up with a better plan than that, it probably wouldn’t go through,” Alpert said.
• The commission directed the city attorney to prepare an ordinance restricting sitting and lying on downtown sidewalks for consideration at a future public hearing.
• The commission voted not to take any legal action in pursuit of ranked choice voting until the board could hold a more substantive discussion of the topic at a future meeting.