FAIRHOPE – The cancellation of the Fairhope Arts and Crafts Festival for the first time in 68 years will mean a major financial loss for merchants and arts supporters, but city officials said the threat of covid 19 is too great a risk to allow the event.
The council voted 4-1 on Friday, March 13 to recommend postponing the festival, scheduled to start March 20.
Mayor Karin Wilson, whose family owns the downtown Page and Palette Book Store, said the council had no good choice in the issue.
“I have been talking about this for the last couple of weeks, so I have gone through every single emotion that you can go through and it’s the last thing I would want to ever recommend, not just as a business owner,” Wilson said. “This is a very profitable business for us, really second to Christmas, but I do think that with our population, with a high percentage of elderly and we have vendors coming from all over the country, and we just really need to do the responsible thing.”
Lang Floyd, a member of the Arts and Crafts Foundation, said festival organizers would go along with whatever choice was made by the council.
“The festival, if it determines that we need to cancel it, that is not a decision that the foundation takes lightly. It is a heart-breaking, quite frankly, decision,” Floyd told City Council members. “We will do whatever we agree is in the best interest of the city, for the citizens of Fairhope, for the festival, for the downtown merchants, for the artists, taking everything into consideration, that’s what we want to do is work with you to do that.”
Downtown businesses depend on the festival and the cancellation will be a major hit for the economy, said Lisa White, a downtown merchant for 24 years.
“The economic (impact) for our whole county, for our merchants downtown is huge,” she said. “I have, I can’t even tell you how much money involved for this weekend.”
The Eastern Shore Art Association also holds its art show at the same time as the festival. Bryant Whelan, ESAA director, said that event will also be canceled and will be a major loss for the association.
“Our festival, 49 years old, is one of our very largest fundraisers,” Whelan said. “That’s part of our budget, part of our operating expenses. For us, it’s really part of our livelihood, so we’re counting on it. It’s a little bit of a different situation, because we need it to keep the lights on.”
Councilman Jay Robinson said the choice was a “no-win situation.”
“When you’re talking about the economic impact on your community, it’s significant and this is significant factor for a lot of people in this area and so it shouldn’t be taken lightly, no matter what the decision is,” Robinson said. “But you have to remember in that same vein that you are talking about economics and that is not to be placed above the health and safety of your community and that’s sort of where the rub it.”
Councilman Jimmy Conyers said he did not decide until shortly before the meeting to support calling off the festival.
“I think the panic is worse than the virus itself in some ways, but there’s a difference between going about our regular daily lives and trying to take precautions and have 150,000, 200,000 people come through our town. We lose a lot of control over what may happen there from a health perspective,” Conyers said. “It’s awful because we’ve had this event for 68 years. I know how important it is to the merchants.”
Councilman Robert Brown was the only council member to support going on with the festival at the Friday meeting.
“The downtown merchants that are going to be affected, the vendors that are coming to the show, leave it up to the individuals, if they feel that their health is endangered,” Brown said.
He said officials do not know if the festival would bring the virus to the area, but they do know the impact of cancelling the event. “But we do know the effect if we cancel it on the individual families that receive revenue from this weekend that allow them to pay bills and feed their kids,” Brown said.
Floyd said festival organizers will try to reschedule the event for later this year but may not be able to bring the artists back.
“We will do whatever we can to come up with a logistical way to do it,” Floyd said. “You cannot do it without artists and if their schedule puts it in such a way that you can’t do, regardless of the weather, regardless of the city giving us the streets on another day or the date. And we still have to figure out how long is this issue that’s causing us to do this, how far out are we going to be. If we try to schedule it a month from now, and we’re in an even worse situation, we’re going to be right back here talking about it again, with even more money.”
