by Max Marbut
Staff Writer
If you’re in business – particularly if you’re in retail or the restaurant and bar business – the sound you like to hear more than just about any other is the sound your cash register makes when it’s ringing.
The combination of two days and three nights of the Jacksonville Jazz Festival plus the final weekend of Disney’s the Lion King at the T-U Center added to the Jacksonville Cycling Classic, a Suns home baseball game and a couple of events at Hemming Plaza on Saturday made that sound echo Downtown at a level that was music to the ears of merchants.
“Our best estimate is the combination of events that were held over the weekend brought 50,000 people Downtown,” said Terry Lorince, executive director of Downtown Vision, Inc.
She said the City’s Special Events Department planning the events to include venues beyond the main festival site produced some real benefits.
“Metropolitan Park is a fabulous facility, but it’s not Downtown. Between the Jazz Festival and the Cycling Classic, the streets were crowded and that’s great. DVI is all about having lots of people on the streets.
“It also brought many young people Downtown with their parents and a lot of them were teenagers and younger. Events like we had last weekend really help educate that important demographic about Downtown.”
Pamela Elms, DVI’s director of marketing, also said she views the weekend’s combination of activities as a success.
“We’re here to support anything that brings people Downtown. It’s even better when Downtown can connect with an existing event like the Jazz Festival and create things for people to do.”
“We had a nice rush Saturday night,” said Paul Shockey, co-owner of Burrito Gallery on Adams Street. “Every time there’s an event Downtown, we do great business.”
Shockey compared last Saturday’s business to what the Burrito Gallery experiences during other events like First Wednesday Art Walk. He said when Art Walk debuted, “we had to give away food and drinks to draw people over here. Now Art Walk is our biggest night of the entire month.”
Shockey added he thinks providing trolleys to move jazz fans away from the main stage at Metropolitan Park and into smaller venues in the business core was a winner because, “it helps people learn about the rest of Downtown.”
Lorince said having artists perform at the Florida Theatre and the Ritz Theatre and LaVilla Museum for the entire Jazz Festival weekend this year added a new element.
“The smaller venues can be more appropriate for many acts,” she said. “I think it helped prove Jacksonville has one of the premier jazz festivals in the country.”
Lori Strange, marketing director for the Florida Theatre, said the weekend was a big success for the 80-year-old hall, which has traditionally hosted only the Friday night Great American Jazz Piano Competition. She added jazz isn’t the easiest genre of music to sell, and credited festival organizers for the large audiences on Saturday and Sunday.
“It was phenomenal,” she said. “The orchestra level was full before every performance. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that many people come out for jazz. The City made the festival affordable and accessible so everybody could have fun with it. It really opened a lot of people’s eyes about what’s available Downtown.”
Theresa O’Donnell Price, director of the City’s Special Events Department, said advance ticket sales for this year’s Jazz Festival totaled nearly 5,000 people including VIP packages, “and our walk-up crowd at Metropolitan Park was huge.” The City was still counting tickets Monday morning and will release the final attendance figures later this week.
Saturday, the Jacksonville Cycling Classic brought some of the country’s top bicycle racers to a course that went past the Landing. A mix of cycling fans and jazz fans who came for the events added to the atmosphere and traffic level, said Kathleen Singletary, manager of Happy Landing.
“I’ve been here every Saturday since October and last weekend’s business was way above average,” she said. “It wasn’t as big as Florida-Georgia weekend, but there were lots of people having a good time and spending money. We saw a lot of new faces. People who either have never been here or haven’t been here in years are starting to revisit Downtown.”
Lorince said the effects of including Downtown venues as part of the Jazz Festival programming were inspiring.
“We saw a lot of opportunities to share our Downtown retailers and restaurants with the rest of the community.”
O’Donnell Price also said the way the market embraced this year’s enhancements may lead to including even more offerings at future jazz festivals.
“We may shake it up a little. We might make the festival longer and perhaps add some more jazz brunches at different locations. People loved it a few years ago when we had some of the acts perform at Friendship Park on the Southbank. We’d like to include Hemming Plaza and the Landing, maybe for late-night events. We’ll consider everything.”