Tulsa International Mayfest - Relocating to Arts District

[MostSeriousness]

Mayfest will be in the Arts District this year, per their press announcement this morning. With a few changes as well.

Big changes are coming to Tulsa International Mayfest this year. Executive Director Heather Pingry made the announcements in a news conference Wednesday morning, January 30.

The festival will move from downtown to the newly renamed Tulsa Arts District - formerly known as the Brady Arts District.

In addition to the new location, the festival will be one day shorter. Mayfest will go from four to three days in 2019 - May 17 through 19.

The final announcement was accompanied by some fist pumping on Pingry's part. Festival-goers will no longer have to purchase coupons to buy food and drink at the popular spring arts festival. Mayfest will take cash and cards this year.

No word on any guarantees of clear skies and light breezes.

http://www.newson6.com/story/39877450/tulsa-mayfest-gets-new-address-in-2019

[DTowner]

Mayfest ebbs and flows over the years and the last few seem to have been a bit of a struggle, so it is probably time to mix it up.  I think attendance was down the past few years, but some of that is weather related and uncontrollable.  Last year also seemed to have significantly fewer artist booths.

In many ways it makes sense for the city's largest art festival to be located in the city's arts district.  However, a substantial amount of the weekday attendance was from the office dwellers in downtown.  I suspect only a few of those folks will trek over to the arts district during their lunch hour.  That is probably a big reason why they are dropping Thursday and going to just 3 days.  Being able to utilize Guthrie Green and its stage will hopefully improve the quality of music entertainment.

The biggest challenge of the move (other than having people showing up and 3rd and Boston looking for Mayfest) may be distinguishing itself from the monthly First Friday Art Crawls.

[Townsend]

No longer needing to rely on tickets is enormous.

I think relocating to the Arts District will allow a whole new experience.  It may stop many people from commenting how tired they feel Mayfest is.

I truly hope the sun shines and the people come.

[MostSeriousness]

The move (and no coupons) is definitely a refresher. I can't help but think some of the move and new planning was part of Mayfest semi-absorbing some Blue Dome Arts Fest leftovers.

Food trucks and utilizing Guthrie Green would definitely cut back their expenses, so that's a plus that can translate to some more unique entertainment options.

[DTowner]

I assumed the ticket system was because Mayfest charged the food/beverage vendors a percentage of sales.  In addition to masking the price you paid for that corndog, it also allowed Mayfest to accurately account for sales.

Is the new Mayfest is going to rely on food trucks instead of the fair style food vendors from the past?  With so many restaurants within or near the Mayfest area, it seems a lot less outside vendors are needed.

[Conan71]

Not the first time this has been done.  They moved it north of the tracks in 1991 or 1992.  I believe they also expanded to 10 days and took a financial bath on it.  I think the timing is ripe for this now.

[heironymouspasparagus]

That ticket thing was always offputting and a big reason we finally wound down and stopped going.  I bet the vendors really hated it, too!!  I know I would if I were selling there.

Fairgrounds has a method of spot checking that seems to work fairly well.  Yeah, there may be some things slip through the cracks a little, but in general, revenues will be reported pretty close.  Any legitimate vendor would generally not look at that as a "one-time" event...they want to come back and if an audit shows they were skimming too much and underreporting, there would be no further participation allowed.  And audits don't have to be an in-place activity like in the distant past - they can check the videos at their leisure over the following weeks to see if the reported money matches apparent business at the window.  Things like that are SOOOO much easier now than in the past!!