After two decades of celebrating the New Year downtown, the Akron community nearly scrapped First Night.
Talk of replacing the celebration began in late 2015. Donations were down, again, and forecasts for 2016 were even lower as attendance continued a steady decline.
But unlike the Rib White & Blue or Italian festivals, which are free and held in the summer, 13,500 people bought tickets and came together in Akron’s cold city streets last year to watch live performances and fireworks.
And so the Akron Downtown Partnership, which runs the annual event and expressed relief that attendance didn’t fall any further, launched a series of community focus groups in January to decide the fate of First Night.
“It’s a big tradition for a lot of people,” said Sharon Gillberg, who helps organize the event for the downtown organization. “We had always kind of promoted that it’s indoors. You can park indoors. We’ve got the shuttles. We’ve got the trolleys. But we see a lot of other winter festivals that embrace the outside.”
Organizers, concerned about “keeping with the times,” began coaxing attendees to step outside last year.
Noticing that few wished to walk far in the winter, sanctioned venues on the outskirts were closed, with more closures this year.
On a Lock 3 stage typically used for a fireworks display, Blues performer Colin Dussault played outside for hours. People stood in the park, some curiously peeking around the corner from the Barley House or standing along Main Street to hear the Cleveland musician.
Beer and wine was served for the first time at a few select venues, which will serve again this year.
Staying warm
“Let’s be outside,” Gillberg said. “It’s Northeast Ohio. It’s probably going to be cold. It’s probably going to be snowy. This year, we’re doing more programming outside on the main stage, with additional bands. We’ll have food trucks and a heated tent. We’re going to put luminaries out, portable heaters.”
To keep people warm and happy, the entire event has shrunk. Once sprawled across downtown, all venues — with the exception of the Akron Civic Theatre — will be huddled in a quarter-mile corridor stretching from Zion Lutheran Church to the Akron Art Museum, where attendees can stroll through an ice sculpture garden and stop to take a picture atop an ice throne.
A section of Mill Street between High Street and Broadway Avenue will be closed to traffic to host the main stage.
New direction
In January, following the event’s 20th anniversary, Downtown Akron Partnership held several focus groups to engage 30 to 40 performers, board members, donors, attendees and local businesses.
“We were going into it with a totally open mind of we want to hear what you think about First Night — should it continue?” said Kelli Fetter, director of events at Downtown Akron Partnership. “Because to us, it’s the community’s event. We just put it on.
“So we wanted to know from them: Do you like, do you want it to continue, and, if you want it to continue, what do you want it to be, knowing that 20 years ago when it started downtown was very different?”
In surveys given out to assess the community’s wishes, only 46 percent of respondents said keep the First Night name. The rest were either undecided or advocated for something new, not only in name.
Ultimately, the stakeholders decided to keep the name and core mission of the event, which is to celebrate the diversity in all Akron has to offer — with ample emphasis on family-friendly entertainment.
“So from those focus groups and the surveys that we sent out to people who attend First Night and a number of other conversations, we decided that yes, it is still relevant,” said Fetter. “We recognized that we had to look at the diversity in our performances and performers in making sure that we were keeping up with what was going on in the city and making sure that we were representing the diverse population of the city.”
This year features the return of tried-and-true favorites. Children can enjoy a magic show at the Civic. Headphone-wearing millennials can silently rock out at a silent disco in the John S. Knight Center.
But Fetter sought more diversity.
Flying in a national band would have drained a third of the budget for performers. So she looked locally, booking bands like the upbeat Jul Big Green from Cleveland and the soul-soothing Wesley Bright and the Honeytones from Akron, to add contemporary flavor to the array of musicians. Even the addition of the Chardon Polka Band promises “Polka With Attitude.”
Need to shrink
The community conversation began with the knowledge that $30,000 in Downtown Akron Partnership funding would not be available this year as funding commitments have continually declined with shrinking attendance.
In 2015, as was the case for the past few years, the budget was $167,000 — a far cry from the $500,000 spent at the turn of the century.
This year, the host organization set and met a more practical fundraising goal of $137,000. About $53,000 of that total is expected to be raised in button and passport sales.
First night attendance peaked at the end of the 20th century. Event coordinators attribute the excitement then to the fervor of Y2K. The usual joy of ushering in the new year mixed with speculation of a global technology meltdown.
The calamity proved to be all hype. But 30,000 people came downtown as the temperature remained above freezing all day. The weather, organizers said, is an outsize indicator of good, or poor, attendance.
Attendance dipped back down the next year to about 18,000 and stayed there throughout the early 2000s. In the past five or six years, between 13,000 and 15,000 have attended. The host organization has punched 14,000 buttons for this coming celebration.
Doug Livingston can be reached at 330-996-3792 or dlivingston@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow on Twitter: @ABJDoug