Imagine walking down Calder Way with a cup of beer or a glass of wine in hand.
You’re surrounded by festivities including live music from artists both local and national.
That might sound like a pipe dream in State College, but it will be a reality in just a handful of months at the Summer’s Best Music Fest, which will be held downtown on June 3 and 4.
At Monday night’s borough council meeting, the council approved a proposal from the festival organizers asking for the open container ordinance to be waived for the festival within its boundaries.
“We’ve worked hard to make this a destination event, to help draw people into downtown State College,” Downtown Improvement District executive director George Arnold said. “We’re working to bring in better musical acts and more national artists.”
In order to bring in national artists, there needs to be money, and that comes with sponsorships. Those become readily available if a festival allows alcohol sales, which prompted Arnold and the festival organizers to contact a management company, Lucky Dog Management, which has experience ramping up similarly-sized festivals.
The 2015 edition of the festival was headlined by country artist Jo Dee Messina and included performances from artists including The Boomers, Eric Ian Farmer, Jackie Brown & the Gill Street Band, and many more. There was an ice cream festival, a Kids Zone, and the Centre Sings vocal competition tied into Summer’s Best.
The Summer’s Best Music Fest’s tenth year will be a pilot program of sorts for the borough, testing how an outdoor festival with no open container ban will run for the first time. And if it’s successful — meaning there aren’t any major alcohol-related incidents — perhaps more of the same is in store for downtown State College.
Councilman Peter Morris asked that a review of the open container law be tied into the pilot program, essentially prompting the council to take a look at the ordinance in light of the festival.
“What I’d like to suggest is that if the open container law is suspended and the event is successful, that the whole question of the open container law and whether it ought to be repealed or modified should also be part of the pilot project and should be thought through,” he said. “I think that if the open container law is bad for this event it’s probably bad for everywhere.”
Morris hesitantly added that he doesn’t necessarily support the open container law in the first place, explaining that it’s essentially a blanket designation that covers other crimes.
“It seems like it’s kind of a cover for violations that really should be illegal, like people acting in a drunken way and vandalizing, but I don’t think it’s the open container that causes those problems,” Morris said.
Borough resident Jim Shincovich warned the council members that waiving the open container ordinance could be a poor idea.
“I think that the people on council supporting that aspect of it are fairly naive in thinking it’s a benefit to the community,” he said. “Anytime we have alcohol with anybody in this community, there’s problems.”
“If it’s about sacrificing the neighborhoods for the sake of making a few bucks off of alcohol and drunken people, I think it’s appalling that the council would support such a thing,” Shincovich added.
Councilman Evan Myers recognized that there could be some issues that arise as a result of the open container law waiver, but said that he’d try anything once.
“It is possible that the publicity that we get if something goes wrong will not be pleasant, and we have to go in with our eyes open to that,” Myers said. “I will in fact vote for this, because as I said I will try anything once, but if something goes wrong all of us are going to have a very big black eye, which is not going to be pleasant.”
