Future of the festival

The well-attended Tuesday-night street festival Surf City Nights has made it past the trial phase, and downtown retailers and restaurants have begun to make the business-boosting event financially viable. But larger questions about the future shape of the festival — and of Main Street as a shopping district — remain.

The last two weeks have seen major changes for Surf City Nights, with many long-sought improvements finally arriving. A new farmer’s market for Surf City Nights does not charge event coordinators an up-front fee, cutting thousands of dollars from the event’s price tag. Booths now stretch to a third block of Main Street, leaving the festival less crammed for space. And the event has its first sponsor this month, so businesses won’t have to pay for it through the end of July.

The new farmer’s market coordinator has had a palpable effect on street life, said Downtown Business Improvement District Executive Director Connie Pedenko. In addition to not charging thousands of dollars a week like the earlier company, the new company got vendors to keep their trucks off the street. That extra space is helped further by closing the first block of Main Street, giving them more room, she said.

“It’s been such a world of difference for merchants this week,” she said. “Foot traffic was using both sides of the street. There were openings between the farmers’ market and the stores. Sidewalks were just as full as the street was.”

Even without a subsidy, new vendors say the event is good business for them.

“This is going fantastic,” said farmer John Sweredoski, whose produce stand was making its Huntington Beach debut on Tuesday. “It’s a great little market. I might even bring three booths next time.”

The biggest change has been that the Business Improvement District, made up of downtown businesses, has taken over most of the job of running the festival, said Economic Development project manager Jim Lamb.

“They’ve stepped up and really become a full partner in this thing,” he said. “More and more they’re kind of the managing partner to some extent.”

Verizon Wireless is sponsoring the event this month, but Pedenko says event coordinators are still trying to find other sponsors.

“We’re trying to find a way to make Surf City Nights as financially self-sufficient as possible,” she said. “Obviously it is wonderful marketing.”

To festival visitor John Ramirez, the changes were welcome.

“It’s a lot less squeezed now,” he said, munching on funnel cake as he watched a group of dancing street performers. “You can walk around and see all this stuff without bumping into people.”

Changes further into the future get more cloudy, organizers and officials said. While some have called for a permanent closure of Main Street, it will be a long time before that debate is settled. The City Council hired consultants to study the area’s future with and without a pedestrian mall, but they aren’t scheduled to come up with findings for a year and a half.

There are many questions that remain, said Councilman Keith Bohr, from infrastructure costs to the effect on traffic, or whether closing Main Street could be done differently at various times throughout the year.

“Most people have a yes-they-want-to close it or no-they-don’t approach, but there’s all kinds of different combinations of what you could do,” he said.

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