Downtown group mulls Fresh Friday changes

After two installments of the city’s Fresh Friday downtown event series, organizers are enthused about the turnout, but some merchants and residents remain critical of the nighttime hours of operation.

On Tuesday, members of the Downtown Improvement District reviewed how the first two Fresh Friday events went and discussed opportunities for tweaking the pilot program. The DID is teaming with the city on funding and organizing Fresh Fridays, an event program scheduled to run through April on the first Friday of the month.

Fresh Fridays was inspired by similar monthly events in other communities in the region, and organizers expressed hope the program would be an attraction for residents while encouraging visitors to patronize downtown businesses. But at Tuesday’s DID meeting, the reported feedback from merchants indicated the November and December events hadn’t delivered the desired effect for some store owners.

“We have seen no benefit to us or additional business,” said Harmoni Krusing Bens, owner of Lotus Boutique and vice president of the Sarasota Downtown Enrichment Association.

The reason for the absence of increased sales was a subject of dispute among those in attendance at the DID meeting. Event organizers said they felt the inaugural Fresh Friday was not a good representation of the event’s potential impact because of inclement weather during the evening. The December event, however, was designed in part to highlight downtown businesses. Themed “Shop, Stroll, Sing,” the goal was to encourage visitors to pop into stores before arriving at the centralized event location on Lemon Avenue.

The DID hired Joe Grano, president of marketing company Next-Mark, to lead the planning of Fresh Fridays. Grano said he made efforts to engage with merchants, including distributing informational material at stores and holding a pair of kickoff meetings prior to the first Fresh Friday to get input from businesses. Despite the outreach, Grano said he believed shop owners weren’t taking steps to capitalize on the crowds attending Fresh Fridays, which he estimated exceeded 1,500 people in December.

“Quite frankly, I don’t think we got the engagement from merchants we would have liked to have had,” Grano said.

DID board member Chris Voelker agreed with Grano and expressed frustration about what she saw as a failure to support a burgeoning opportunity to benefit downtown as a whole.

“It felt like there was an effort to undermine this,” Voelker said.

Ron Soto, a DID board member and president of the Downtown Sarasota Enrichment Association, questioned whether Grano’s outreach efforts were as effective as he believed them to be, stating some merchants indicated they hadn’t gotten enough information about the program.

“I haven’t gotten any communication from you,” Soto said.

Bens, who said she was invited to but did not attend the kickoff meetings, targeted the event’s hours of operation as one reason merchants weren’t benefitting from Fresh Fridays. At the direction of the City Commission, Fresh Fridays run from 8-11 p.m. Although Commissioner Jen Ahearn-Koch cited merchant input in her push for an earlier start time, a majority of the City Commission said it believed beginning at 8 p.m. would allow the events to serve both younger and older residents.

Bens, however, said merchants were not interested in staying open until 8 p.m. in hopes of attracting customers visiting for Fresh Fridays. Both Bens and Soto said the prospect of staying open for at least two or three more hours was not appealing for stores that typically close at 5 p.m. or 6 p.m., and they suggested merchants might be more amenable to engaging with Fresh Fridays if the events started earlier.

Although there was some discussion about whether 7-10 p.m. might work best as a compromise, the DID board ultimately voted unanimously to approach the city about holding January’s Fresh Friday — themed “Dance the Night Away” — from 6-9 p.m. Voelker noted the DID is not the lone party involved in organizing the events, and that the city was responsible for establishing the original hours. Still, DID board members said they thought it was reasonable to evaluate whether Fresh Fridays are more warmly received with an earlier start.

“If 6-9 p.m. would satisfy the merchants and satisfy the residents, it seems ridiculous not to try,” DID board member Mark Kauffman said.