Main Street El Dorado board members discussed at length Tuesday an issue they did not anticipate, but agreed that it is an issue that will become more common in coming years in El Dorado.
MSE’s executive committee recently decided to schedule MusicFest 2016 for Oct. 14 and 15, moving the flagship fundraiser from the first full weekend of October, its traditional date.
Mark Givens, MSE executive director, previously explained that the action was taken after board members learned that El Dorado High School’s 2016 homecoming football game, parade and other related activities had been rescheduled to Oct. 7, which would have been the same as MusicFest’s traditional opening night.
On Tuesday, MSE board members pointed out that the Paint the Town Pink 5K Color Fun Walk/Run, which raises money for cancer research, had also been set for Oct. 15 on the downtown square and would have coincided with on the second day of MusicFest 2016.
Following the MSE meeting, Sandy Gross — president of the Team Corrie Cancer Foundation board directors, which hosts PTTP — said she called a board meeting for further discussion, and the board unanimously voted to reschedule PTTP to Oct. 1, the start of Breast Cancer Awareness month.
Mayor Frank Hash said organizers for PTTP and MusicFest Tuesday morning in his office to hash out the matter, and he noted that the PTTP event had been posted on the Go El Dorado website calendar since January.
Hash described the calendar as a clearinghouse for events that are going on in El Dorado and Union County. The city website is administered by the El Dorado-Union County Chamber of Commerce.
“This morning, the discussion got off to a good start. They felt like they had the date reserved,” Hash said, referring to the listing on he Go El Dorado site.
Mike Dumas, interim president and chief executive officer of the chamber and former El Dorado mayor, reiterated that the calendar serves as a clearinghouse for local events.
“We just wanted someplace where if people call and they want to know what’s going on for the weekend, we have a place where we can look and be able to tell them,” Dumas said.
“So it’s like an awareness more than scheduling,” Hash said.
“It’s for information,” added MSE board member Teresa Golliher.
Gross said she primarily wanted Hash to address the proper protocol for organizing such events in the city.
“I got it on the (Go El Dorado) calendar, and I called the public works department, and that was all I knew to do, and the mayor said I did everything right,” Gross said.
She said PTTP attracted several hundred to 1,000 people in 2015, and the group is hoping for another successful event to raise money for cancer research.
“We are hoping that a record number of people shows up for Paint the Town Pink, and we’re hoping that a record number of people show up for MusicFest and that there voted the (Arkansas Festival of the Year) again,” Gross said.
During the MSE meeting Tuesday, board president Bruce Butterfield reminded the board of a vote it took after a similar situation arose in 2014.
Three area schools — El Dorado, Smackover, and Junction City — celebrated homecoming festivities on the Friday night leg of MusicFest.
Paul Choate, MSE advisory board member, said crowds did not show up for MusicFest that night until headliners Salt-N-Pepa took to the stage.
“That was at least 10 o’clock,” Choate said.
Butterfield said the board subsequently voted to allow for flexibility with the MusicFest schedule to be better able to deal with such challenges.
Givens and Butterfield said the preferred dates for the MusicFest 2016 change were Sept. 30 and Oct. 1, but the Murphy USA El Dorado Shootout, a stop on the Symetra women’s golf tour, is scheduled that weekend.
“They take up all of the hotel rooms in town. This wasn’t a snap decision. Never in a million years would I think this would have been an issue,” Givens said, referring to the same-day scheduling as PTTP.
MSE board members and Hash pointed to efforts by El Dorado Festivals and Events Inc., to implement the “Festival City” brand idea by developing an arts and entertainment district on the south end of downtown.
They said scheduling conflicts with events in the community are going to increase in the future as more events are planned.
“It’s a small town, and we have so much going on, some things are going to overlap,” Walls said.
In other business, Givens said MSE is offering a limited number of Downtown Revitalization Mini-Grants to downtown property/business owners.
The grants are for exterior improvement projects within the downtown area, and they come with a 50/50 match and $1,000 cap.
He said the mini-grants have been used for awnings, paint jobs, and other exterior improvements for downtown properties.
For more information or to apply, call the MSE office at (870) 862-4747 or send an email to [email protected].
Givens also reminded board members that a $5.6 million renovation project for the El Dorado Municipal Auditorium is scheduled to be completed in early June.
He said MSE is working to book a show there by mid-June.