Students attending Madison’s historic Mifflin Street block party next month might see large changes in the event’s structure and regulations, as city officials introduced the possibility of lifting the open bottle ordinance and creating a mini-Lollapalooza atmosphere at a meeting Wednesday.
Representatives from Majestic Live, the event’s sponsor, said planners are working to finalize their suggestions, which would effectively eliminate a number of limitations previously placed on students during the party.
“We came up with a plan that’s a fairly large departure in some ways from what it has been in the past, mainly in that [the party] would go more toward an art fair on the Square model, where there will be beer vending on the street and a relaxation of the open container laws for the 400 and 500 blocks of Mifflin,” Majestic Live co-owner Scott Leslie said. “It’s a process to say the least, but we have been working very cooperatively with Madison Police Department.”
Leslie said the details of the plan are only tentative, but he said the planners have been in close contact with city officials throughout the process.
In order to regulate the newly permitted street drinking, Leslie said there would be wristband stations set up at the ends of the street where students could show their IDs and get a specialized wristband that would allow them to purchase alcohol from beer vending stations, Leslie said.
Assistant City Attorney Lara Mainella said the city could dispense conditional liquor licenses to allow for temporary street use. She said the event would get a Class B beer permit that would allow people to buy and consume beverages in the location where the permit is in effect and would also make the open container law temporarily out of effect.
Majestic Live co-owner Matt Gerding said the basic idea behind the changes is to allow a sort of standard “music festival 101,” where a stage would be placed on either side of the street with additional vending along the sides of the road.
“The hope is that by not making beer a taboo at the block party and allowing it to be drank openly on the street by those who are over 21, we will end up with an event that’s much more overt and much more on the street with a much more natural flow because of the music going back and forth,” Gerding said.
With the stages on either side of the street, Leslie said the ideal layout would be similar to the layout of Lollapalooza, which would help pull the crowd to spread out. Majestic Live is trying to bring people outside of the houses and backyards and into the streets to avoid overcrowding and begin gradually making live music more of the event’s focus.
Leslie said he does not anticipate the new guidelines to attract bigger name bands this year but said Mifflin has historically had a heavy focus on local and student talent – a trend Majestic hopes to continue.
“When we were approached about sponsoring the event, we set some ground rules for ourselves as far as what our involvement would look like, and we feel like we listened very carefully to what the wants and needs of the student body were,” Leslie said.
