Still kicking
Downtown Partners remains, focuses on arts festival for 2008
BY MARSHA L. MELNICHAK Northwest Arkansas Times
Fayetteville Downtown Partners still exists, the proposed downtown improvement district is still a possibility and the Arts Festival still could be held this fall, according to a report the organization issued to the City Council.
“We do still exist, we are still a functioning board and it’s because we individually are passionate about downtown Fayetteville,” Sarah Lewis, a board member of Fayetteville Downtown Partners, said Thursday.
“We want it to thrive. But it feels like even though the city says, ‘We want to support the arts; we want to be the entertainment district of Northwest Arkansas,’ they don’t back it up with really putting their money where their mouth is essentially.”
In September, Fayetteville Downtown Partners, which was created “to strengthen and promote the heart of the city and our urban experience in Northwest Arkansas,” let go of its paid staff and became a volunteer-based organization. Its final year of a three-year agreement with the city ended in December with the accomplishment of at least one major goal still incomplete.
“FDP is still around, by the way. Most people don’t think so,” Daniel Keeley, president of the organization, said while presenting a report about accomplishments and activities to the council this week.
“There’s a mistaken perception that with our funding changes and loss of staff, that we don’t have any vitality,” Tom Overbey, another board member, told the Northwest Arkansas Times.
“The idea of developing the downtown is great, but it takes money — money and people,” Lewis said Thursday.
She said support from the city is essential for Fayetteville Downtown Partners.
“Why they would ask a group of volunteers to take on such an important and very economically beneficial project as developing and revitalizing our downtown … that seems like it needs to be on top of the list for Fayetteville City Council and mayoral staff and not put off on an entirely volunteer group. That sort of frustrates me,” she said.
Improvement district
Fayetteville Downtown Partners made “significant progress” in 2007 toward the goal of establishing a downtown improvement district, Keeley said.
An improvement district is a self-imposed taxing entity formed and governed by the property owners, he explained. To accomplish that “deliverable” in the agreement with the city, FDP would have needed to have signatures from property owners representing 67 percent of the property value in the proposed district by the end of September.
That didn’t happen.
Keeley said they started the year at 33 percent and built to more than 50 percent. He and Overbey talked about numerous and repeated contacts with property owners and working to change state law to allow more local input in formation of improvement districts.
Overbey, answering a question from Mayor Dan Coody, said every person who didn’t sign the petition to form the district seemed to have a different reason. He said he didn’t see one common problem that could be fixed to get the needed support.
“Some fire needs to be lit under the property owners to get the improvement district formed or it’s a dead doughnut,” Overbey told the council.
The message he hoped the council received was that the improvement district has a future if the property owners will support it.
After its agreement with the city ended, FDP provided documents on the district to the property owners chosen to represent it.
“We really need the business improvement district to happen,” Coody, who has “signed on” as one of the property owners in the district, said.
Coody said in light of the city’s tight budget, he would be surprised if the City Council funded further agreement with Fayetteville Downtown Partners.
Keeley said Thursday that Fayetteville Downtown Partners definitely wants to see the Downtown Improvement District approved, but it is now up to the commissioners-elect to push that forward. He said the Downtown Partners board would help if they were asked and if they are able.
“We’re not going to be sending out dozens of mailers and gathering information like we did in years past when we had paid staff. We just can’t do it,” Keeley said. “A lot of people think both FDP and the DID died when we let our staff go. We’re not heading up the DID in 2008, but it is still alive.
“It really does just depend on the property owners because no one can force them to sign anything, and it won’t ever happen unless they do. So, if they recognize the value and want it, they should and can make it happen. If they don’t, I guess it won’t.”
Accomplishments
Creation of a cultural arts district was cited as the big accomplishment for the organization in Keeley’s report to the council.
“That one we accomplished,” he said.
According to the report, Downtown Partners also established a public art policy and the Fayetteville Arts Council, hosted two Web sites that promoted downtown Fayetteville, assisted the city with a parking deck project, assisted with Downtown Master Plan issues and architectural standards, managed the Dickson Street banner program and organized a think tank on wayfinding and signage, updated a white paper about policies and processes for a cultural arts district, supported downtown business through committee work and advertising, maintained contact with the Fayetteville Council of Neighborhoods and expanded the Fayetteville Arts Festival.
“That is a phenomenal feat that all of those things took place,” said Lewis, who said there doesn’t seem to be any recognition from “the city as a whole” for how substantial those accomplishments were.
“Those things weren’t seen as valuable,” she said. “I’m saying they weren’t seen as valuable because they cut off the support for continuing those kinds of things.”
Arts festival
A 2008 Arts Festival is the “primary goal” of the nowvolunteer organization.
“It won’t be as big and flashy. There’s no guarantee that it will happen at all, but we are trying. Our board is focusing on that. We’re trying to drum up the necessary support in the community,” Keeley said.
He said about 9,000 people attended the two-weekend event last fall and that the festival had grown over the last three years in which FDP was in control of the event.
Coody said the only way the city will have a successful arts festival is to have a full-time, paid person in charge. Growth and improvements in recent years bear out that point of view, he said.
“Relying on volunteers to handle big projects is great as long as the volunteers don’t burn out, and volunteers always burn out,” he said.
“ We need money and interest. If the community wants an arts festival, it’s going to take a collaborative effort,” Keeley said.
Publication:Northwest Arkansas Times; Date:Feb 3, 2008; Section:News; Page Number:1
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