Plans for the Mifflin Street Block Party have been significantly scaled back following an announcement from the Madison Police Department that its officers would not enforce attendees only being allowed to drink alcoholic beverages bought at the event.
The event’s sponsors, Scott Lesie and Matt Gerding of Majestic Live, met with members of the event’s co-sponsors from Capitol Neighborhoods, Inc. to put forward the modified plans for the April 30 event.
CNI member Scott Kolar said the ideal plan was originally to have private security enforce students’ voluntary compliance of a rule that would only allow partygoers to consume beer bought from the event on public property. Upon presenting the plans to MPD, Majestic was told MPD would not enforce the rule and did not want private security brought in.
With the likely drop in revenue brought in from beer sales given the lack of enforcement, Kolar said Majestic had no choice but to scale back the event.
“For us to be involved in the event is obviously a significant time sponge, and we’ve been working diligently on it, but it’s not a cheap event to produce, so there needs to be some kind of financial incentive,” Gerding said. “To tackle that burden, the idea was that we would sell beer.”
This will be the first time since the 1990s that partiers will be allowed to consume alcoholic beverages in the street. Kolar said the decision would save the city time and money in resources because MPD officers would not have to worry about constantly citing students who often fail to comply with the rule on party day.
Ald. Mike Verveer, District 4, said MPD would still enforce the no glass containers ordinance. He also said he hopes students and others attending the event would realize the profits made from beer vending would not only help offset the costs of the event, but would also benefit the community through future projects such as park improvements.
The primary effect of the scale backs will be a drop from an original two stages to one smaller stage, Lesie said. He said further input from the Madison Police and Fire Departments also contributed to the decision.
“It’s definitely been scaled down, but it’s probably a bit more realistic in the short time frame we had to work with,” Lesie said.
Gerding said Majestic was still hoping to add something to the event that students would find exciting, which was the group’s initial intention through making the event more music-oriented and asking the city to lift the ordinance preventing alcoholic consumption in the streets.
He said if the event is successful this year, attendees could expect to see exciting changes in the coming years.
“Our long term vision with this is to have bigger stages and potentially headline acts down the road, but this year we need to have a plan work through all the roadblocks.” Gerding said. “We’re really hoping that for 2012, we can push for everything we want to see Mifflin become.”
Although there will only be one stage, which will take away from the sponsor’s original intentions to make the event a “mini-Lollapalooza,” Gerding said there would be three DJs and four bands that will alternate performing.
