A Moveable Feast

In tonight's News and Tribune (October 14, 2014) the topic of changing the location of Harvest Homecoming's booths was reported. The Harvest Homecoming festival's president, Jeff Cummins, said, "the Harvest Homecoming Committee is open to suggestions about improving the festival..."

So, here goes.

The current layout for the festival's booths includes these streets and blocks: Market from State to  Third Street (3 blocks)

Pearl Street from Spring to Main (2 blocks)

Bank Street from Spring to Main (2 blocks)

One of the reasons cited by those who object to the Harvest Homecoming's occupation of the downtown streets is that it discombobulates the year round store owners and restaurateurs for the benefit of the festival during its five day run. Further, those not enamored of Harvest Homecoming say that the stakeholders in downtown businesses don't really benefit from the erection of the booths, while it is they who try to make a living downtown the other 51 weeks of the year.

I recall when the festival began in the late Sixties or early Seventies. Downtown New Albany was a much different place then. Quite a few stores were still hanging on to the hope of a business revival against the onslaught of the malling of America, and its local outbreaks found in Clarksville and Louisville. The festival itself was quite different then, too. The footprints of its modest beginnings were confined to fewer blocks. The beer garden actually coexisted with the other booths along Bank Street.

Rather than a business revival, the store owners downtown saw the dismal Seventies, and the wrenching Eighties dash those hopes in a collapse encountered across the land by countless small towns that lost stores, dining, and service businesses to the sprawlers and the big boxers. Because those lean years stretched on into the Nineties, no one seemed to question the logic of handing over the downtown to a once-a-year fling, and the festival grew without constraints. During those lean times, the festival was a welcome change from the boring tune of decline and vacancy which played endlessly on the downtown juke. It seemed to be the song we would always sing until it would become our requiem.

But then a wind of change began to stir here, in New Albany, and in other small towns around the nation. Buy local became an organizing principle for reborn small towns. People began to see that wealth of local origin is a heartier variety of wealth; it is one that can build sustainable prosperity because it is built of the community, and in the community. Some of those who have put skin in the game of downtown revival have begun to question if the model of Harvest Homecoming born in the lean times now jibes with the better days downtown.

While I have no direct stake in the downtown, I, and we all, have a stake in building a sustainable prosperity for our city. So, when one person, or one group sounds a cautionary note about the Harvest Homecoming, and when that note is given front page ink in the News and Tribune, it becomes a topic of general concern.

I first began to hear rumblings against the disruption caused by Harvest Homecoming about ten years ago. It seemed parochial at the time and, I thought, rooted in people being forced out of their usual parking places downtown. It sounded baseless and a little short sighted. More recently, Roger Baylor of the New Albanian Brewing Company, and a stakeholder in downtown New Albany's revival, has been beating the drum for a retooling of the Harvest Homecoming. Baylor has been surprisingly willing to air his opinion on the topic. This may not be widely known, but Baylor rubs some people the wrong way. And, some people will disregard what he says simply because it is he who says it. But, as the adage says, don't shoot the messenger.

Since Mr. Cummins welcomed ideas, and since the Tribune has elevated the festival topic to wider discussion,  it seems the future of the festival and the continued health of the downtown revival could be best served by making the Harvest Homecoming a moveable feast, migrating from one part of downtown to another, as conditions change and dictate. New Albany's downtown was benefitted by the stimulus of the Harvest Homecoming in the festival's early years. I believe the festival is still  a net plus for the city, but it could be a greater contributor to the city which, at no small cost to the taxpayers, mobilizes for, and welcomes its pitching of the tents each year.

If, instead of the layout shown above, the festival's booths moved to different streets, the festival could again serve a revivifying function for downtown. The layout listed above totals seven blocks. The following layout also comprises seven blocks, although these blocks are adjacent to the heart of the downtown. While the festival's 250,000 to 300,000 attendees would still come downtown for the event, they would be somewhat away from what is currently ground zero. This should bring welcome potential customers downtown while not so seriously disrupting the normal flow of commerce.

A possible layout is:

Third Street from Spring to Main (2 blocks)

Market from Bank to Third (1 block)

Bank Street from Market to the railroad tracks (2 blocks)

Main Street, which is no longer a state highway, from Bank to Third Street (2 blocks)

This aims the festival slightly to the East and South of its current venue while leaving the streets in front of the majority of downtown stores and restaurants open for business. I would expect the merchants in the newly vacated streets to open their doors to the festival-goers, although now their doors would not be blocked by booths. Hopefully, the biggest problem facing the merchants would be dealing with an overflow of customers brought downtown by Indiana's biggest street festival.