Last weekend I attended my first Mayfest celebration and it was a blast. I had a wonderful time, saw some stunning performances and ate some great BBQ. In reviewing the great time that I had, I've been wondering why we only do these celebrations twice a year.
Every year Blytheville has the Chili Cook-Off and Mayfest on Main Street. People come from all across the county and some travel even farther for the event and shop owners always talk about record business on those days. If festivals like this bring so much money to our community, why aren't we staging more?
Now, I know that organizing events on the scale of Mayfest can require a lot of work but what if we did it more frequently on a smaller scale. We don't have to have trapeze performers and BBQ contest but what if we had a Saturday once every two months with local vendors, some food trucks and maybe some live music in pocket park?
Personally, I believe that we could revitalize our city's Main Street, bring more money to our entire town and give people something to do every now and again if we did something like this.
I believe that city government would be supportive of events of this scale and frequency also. It would be at low cost to the organizers, likely the city government or Main Street Blytheville and, while it likely wouldn't bring the crowds like Mayfest, it would bring enough people looking to spend money locally.
One of my biggest complaints that I both find myself thinking and hear frequently is that Blytheville doesn't have enough to do in it. People end up leaving town on the weekends to go spend their money elsewhere on leisure activities because other than a few restaurants that all close at 9 p.m. not much goes on in Blytheville on a Saturday night for Joe Citizen to partake in.
Blytheville doesn't have a movie theatre anymore like Jonesboro and it doesn't offer the "night scene" that Memphis has. I know people are tired of hearing Blytheville being compared to Jonesboro and Memphis, particularly when discussing what they have that we don't but we need to make a point to have something that they don't.
If people start to see Main Street getting heavy shopping traffic, it grows the possibilities for the area. We could see some of those empty buildings downtown be filled again and, speaking from experience, an active and creative downtown area is what makes people spend money. I personally love downtown areas with unique local shops and quirky coffee houses. And right now we have great businesses on Main Street but we could always use more. The way to get more is to get more people downtown and the way to get more people downtown is to make downtown unique. If we have a bimonthly "Saturday on Main Street" style event the people, with their wallets, will come.
If you think this would be a good idea, I'd like to hear about it. You can send me an email at the address listed below and if you really think it's a good idea, I challenge you to give your council members a call and see what they think. We need a more active Blytheville to show those in the northeast and across the state that we are just as good a community as anywhere else.
gwilliams@blythevillecourier.com