The Park City Kimball Arts Festival, sponsored by the Kimball Art Center, may have some major changes coming up. The Art Center has put its building (valued at $8 million) on the market, which would mean the arts festival may leave the downtown.
Something like this impacts the Main Street area and the merchants of the downtown. The Park City Council works with the festival agreeing to a financial and government services package to support the arts festival.
"It's an event that's been around a long time. It's important to us," he said, noting the draw of cultural tourism in Park City.
Main Street businesses would likely closely follow any discussions about an arts festival move off the street. Sales at the brick-and-mortar businesses have long been mixed on the street during the festival, but the event brings widespread publicity to Main Street.
In addition, the Art Center may move its dates a week earlier in 2015 (attention artists!) in order not to conflict with the Tour of Utah bicycling race.
Here's the story: http://www.parkrecord.com/park_city-news/ci_26704827/arts-festival-will-kimball-move-end-its-run
Replies
Are you saying, Barrie, that the "good shoes" people show up on Friday night and the tourists come out for the art fair on the weekend? I know that sloping street has been part of the challenge of doing the show.
The show is three days, so good shoes are Thursday night. But locals do come to the show since plenty of them came in our booth. Plenty of patrons were from Salt Lake City as well. We enjoyed being there, but sales weren't as good as they should have been. There's potential there to do really well.
We did this show in 2007 or something like that. It's only 350 miles from my home in Wyoming. I generally like the idea of the show being on Main Street, but so much of the show is positioned on that steep sloping street that I'm glad they put us in the lower flatter section. One of my peeves about this show is that Kimball Art Center held a black tie gala fundraiser indoor art auction the day before artist check-in that featured some of the top (and really high end) western themed artists in the business and the money spent was QUITE A LOT. All spent on artists not in the outdoor show by the patrons who might not come to the outdoor show since they're already tapped out due to the gala. I don't know if they still do this auction since I've not kept close tabs on the western art market or the happenings with the Kimball.
I think it will hurt the show to move it. Maybe its days are over. It's a well attended show and loved by quite a number of artists living in the west. The decision to move the show will hurt artists, not the Kimball. C'est la vie.
EDIT: I just googled and discovered they held a gala in Stein Erikson Lodge the night before the outdoor art show. I don't know if art sales were involved, though. The gala did include a $250 per plate dinner and mentioned. A live and silent auction were mentioned as events.