A city commission delayed action on an entertainment and street use permit for the Mifflin Street Block Party Wednesday, asking the event’s new sponsors to further explain and finalize details for the party’s schedule and set-up plan.
The event’s sponsors, Scott Lesie and Matt Gerding of Majestic Live, said they were approached by Ald. Mike Verveer, District 4, roughly a month ago and were asked to consider sponsoring the event.
Lesie said the planning process has been somewhat challenging, especially given the short amount of time, because Majestic wanted to make sense of sponsoring the party through focusing the event on music, which he said is what “they do.”
Hammering out the details of the event has been even trickier than anticipated because of the overlap with the annual Crazylegs Classic and a protest against Gov. Scott Walker featuring more than 10,000 protests, both planned for the same day in the same general area.
Because the additional traffic in the area would create problems for details like stage placement and street closures, and because final issues such as designating areas for portable bathrooms and a wristband station had yet to be determined, the commission said an additional meeting would need to be held either Monday or Tuesday of next week to hopefully grant ultimate approval.
“We cannot approve a permit here when we don’t have the official, final information,” commission member Kelli Lamberty said. “We just need to have everything finalized as much as we can so that we can handle this – with this being the same day as Crazylegs, having to coordinate the two events is a really big deal.”
Still, Lesie said the sponsors have generally received positive community reaction, though he said there has been some misinformation because the proposed plan is such a large departure from what students and city officials have seen in the past.
Majestic has teamed up with Capitol Neighborhoods, Inc. to apply for a special permit that would lift the city’s ban on open containers in the street for the day of Mifflin. The plan is still working its way through the city process and has not yet received final approval, Verveer said.
Verveer said it was still unclear whether or not students of legal drinking age would be allowed to carry-in and drink their own alcoholic beverages on the streets under the permit, though he said students would still be allowed to transport unopened alcohol to private property.
Lesie said the biggest obstacle the organizers have found is trying to convince the Madison Police Department that the “radical changes” are made with good intentions and will have a positive outcome.
“It’s a big change – it’s certainly true that what we proposed was not met with a whole lot of eagerness; we’ve had to sell the idea to the city,” Lesie said. “The overall goal is to provide the event in such a way that students no longer have to be fearful of being arrested unless they’re being belligerent. I think that’s a big concern for students and that’s why they crowd on the balconies and in backyards – it’s the Mifflin Street Block Party, not the Mifflin backyard party.”
