It's 9AM
Ten percent.
That’s all it takes.
This weekend, a record setting 500,000 people attended the Arkansas State Fair.
It was two years in the making, thanks to Covid.
A pent up rush to spend millions in the city of Little Rock.
I don’t know what the city and state get from the Fair, but this once a year affair brought a lot of people into the city limits and by all accounts, worked wonders.
Blame the marketing team, which did a great job, and will win the contract again next year.
Blame people who wanted to get out on an amazing weekend with no humidity and decent temperatures.
No matter who gets the blame, it was a win for Little Rock.
A win we’ve needed for a long time.
Because 500,000 people coming for a weekend visit bring their tax dollars to a place in need.
And it also brings a lesson city leaders need to memorize and learn from and encourage.
What lesson?
People want to party. They want something to do with their children. They want safe fun and are willing to spend a little of their money doing it.
We saw the same thing happen in North Little Rock when they hosted the Pulaski County Fair along the riverbank.
Thunderstorms and wet weather soaked the region that weekend, and yet, when the clouds cleared out on Sunday morning, people still went.
This venue wasn’t even ¼ the size of the State Fair, yet people trudged through muddy grass, sloshed through puddles and bought tickets and funnel cakes and candy apples by the hundreds.
It’s not just a Fair though.
The Main Street Food Truck Festival is an event hosted by the Downtown Little Rock Partnership and this year, lined up food trucks for six blocks downtown.
They brought in bands on every corner, and invited thousands of people to attend a record setting event.
Maybe the record was set because of Covid, and people just tired of hiding and distancing.
Or maybe, the DLRP knows something that city leaders need to learn.
Give the people something to do and they will.
I look at the City of Pine Bluff.
Why aren’t they hosting or encouraging an organization to host an event once a month designed to bring thousands of people to a part of the city?
Downtown Main Street. Regional Park. Jefferson Square. Zebra Stadium.
Every weekend packed with bands and entertainment and food and fun and people spending money that the city gets a slice of the revenue, which they in turn can use to fund police, fire department, city streets, and more.
Because not all festivals are the same?
Because not every festival will attract a 10% of a half a million people to come play?
That’s true. It’s right.
So let’s take a small little block party held every year in the historic McArthur Park district in Little Rock.
Four blocks long. A dozen food trucks. A half dozen beer tents. Some local businesses and sponsor tents set up to do games and fun stuff. Six bands from noon to ten pm.
Five thousand people showed up.
It doesn’t seem like much, until you add it up with an average spend of $40 per person on food, drink and merch.
Now repeat that scenario six times a year and suddenly you’re looking at a strong community building set of activities that people can get behind and look forward to.
When I was growing up in PB, we had the Fair every fall.
There was the Pine Bluff High School homecoming parade. The UAPB Homecoming Parade. There was a parking lot carnival in Jefferson Square at least once per year. And the big Christmas Parade downtown every December.
That’s four times per year that areas in town were packed with thousands of people.
I’m sure there were at least two more, because we grew up poor and didn’t go to many things that required an entrance fee.
But I know I went to a dozen church events around the city where we paid a few dollars to play games for safe and fun trick or treating.
Or Christmas fairs. Or Summer Fun Cookouts.
I know Florida had those all of the time when I lived there as an adult, so I know these things still go on.
Hell, we still run across Festivals every so often. Hillcrest in the Heights comes to mind, which I’ll miss this year due to a trip to Branson.
We went the year before the Pandemic and had a blast, along with a couple of thousand of our closest friends.
I can hear some naysayers in PB arguing that people in that city are too poor to go to a bunch of Festivals all the time.
But it doesn’t have to be a big price gouge or a shock to the pocket book.
If you get one thousand people to spend an average of $20 per person over a weekend, and the city gets permit fees and tax, and you repeat it, the numbers add up.
It doesn’t have to be one big shock to the system either, it can be spread out over different demographics and different parts of the city so that the foot traffic benefits all.
The fact that this isn’t being done tells me no one wants to take charge of it, and looking at the average age of the City Council in Little Rock and Pine Bluff, I know why.
They are old. They are tired. And they spend more time worried about “problems” than searching for solutions.
It’s not their fault. Problems are the purview of City Councils and old people have seen a lot. They’re good at identifying problems.
What they might not be as good at is identifying solutions that solve money problems.
The old answer of raising taxes may be the only thing they know.
But in a brand new world with brand new opportunities, maybe the way we’ve been doing things isn’t working how it should.
It’s time for something new.
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Sounds like going to those events is great fun