Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
A Times Editorial
St. Petersburg City officials need to make amends to the disappointed patrons of the tall ships festival if they want people to come back for future events.
© St. Petersburg Times, published July 5, 2002
The city of St. Petersburg is earning a reputation for its special events, but not one it would want. Too many people who attended the tall ships festival at the city port last weekend left feeling disappointed or ripped off. That's bad enough, but this was not the first time a downtown event failed to live up to its hype. To compound the problem, rather than learning from the experience, city officials seem to be stuck in denial.
One thing the tall ships festival proved is that a maritime event on St. Petersburg's incomparable waterfront will attract a large and enthusiastic audience. But when you lure a crowd to a confined area, you'd better know what you are doing. The organizers of Americas' Sail 2002 failed that test.
Many in attendance complained that workers were uninformed and quickly overwhelmed. Festivalgoers were charged for parking and charged again to enter the port, but many say they never made it onto a tall ship. The city's neglected port proved to be an inadequate setting for large crowds on a hot, humid day. Event organizers should have limited sales once they realized they had sold tickets to more people than they could handle. As late as this week, however, they still didn't know how many tickets they had sold.
City officials were no help. After inviting the public to the waterfront for Thursday's tall ships parade, police wrote lots of tickets for minor parking violations where regulations were unclear. It takes only one $30 ticket to turn a downtown ambassador into a critic.
The danger for the city is that disappointed patrons will judge future events by this one. As one disgruntled man wrote in a letter to the editor: "We will not be going to any such event in St. Petersburg again anytime soon." If that sentiment grows, it could hurt the city's rejuvenated downtown, which counts on visitors to fuel its comeback.
Some credit should go to the organizing group for taking on such an ambitious project. Don Shay, event official and executive with the Downtown Partnership, said the group was rushed because the opportunity wasn't presented until January. "We wish we had had more time to do it," he said.
Shay has a point, but you wouldn't know anything went wrong by listening to Anita Treiser, the city's marketing director. "I think it went extremely well for a first-time event," Treiser said. "That area is not designed for an event that size. The complaints were pretty much nothing more than we expected."
So Treiser thinks it's okay to squeeze thousands of people into a space the city knows is inadequate and then ignore their complaints. That attitude could explain why the city let a promoter sporting an inflated resume embarrass it with last year's Super Fest fiasco. Maybe that's why the promoters of Bay Fest still haven't paid the city or participating charities the money promised two months ago.
True, the city has a good track record with recurring events such as the Mainsail art show and Festival of States. But on splashy special events, the city is looking more and more like an amateur. Too often, when the dust settles, we find out that the city didn't pay attention to important details. To compound its shortcomings, it refuses to admit it made a mistake, a necessary first step to improving its image.
Mayor Rick Baker should be concerned enough about the situation to put it on his list of things to fix. He could start by giving a refund to those with legitimate complaints about their tall ships experience. That's an inexpensive way to buy back some goodwill. Only with corrective steps will downtown St. Petersburg begin to realize its potential as a venue for ambitious events.