PRINTThe Sun Sets On Twilight
After nearly two decades, support for the festival wanes
Carolin Burrer
For June 2007, Twilight Festival organizers coordinated with the city to close off Ninth Street. Revelers danced to the music of local bands. On average, 20 to 30 musical acts performed throughout June and September. During the 2007 Twilight season, attendance reached an estimated 12,000 on the more popular nights.
September 4, 2008 | 12:00 a.m. CST
Nineteen years ago, Columbia was a much different town. The ’80s were ending, the majority of MU’s current freshman class had yet to be born, and downtown was struggling. Trying to bring locals to this section of Broadway, the city launched Twilight Festival — a modest party that transformed the area and in the process became a CoMo institution.
Since its beginning as an effort to boost business for local merchants and create a more lively downtown, a number of other festivals emerged. For a city its size, Columbia is impressive in its event-planning abilities. But with little explanation and even less notice, Twilight’s organizers announced its imminent end. Just a couple of weeks ago, Columbians were told this September’s festivals would be the last.
• Fourth Street, between Cherry and Locust, will be closed off each day of the festival for activities.
• Cherry Street will be lined over the course of all four Thursdays with 80+ booths for nonprofit organizations. Booths are positioned on a first-come-first-serve basis.
• Booths with various activities will be present in the north and south ends of Flat Branch Park. All booths in will also be positioned on a first-come-first-serve basis.
• All four days will feature, at Flat Branch Park’s north and south ends, children’s play areas, with inflated bounce cages and other apparatuses.
• Sept. 11 is Tiger Twilight, the MU Marching Band’s parade down the Avenue of the Columns, followed by Big Top Circus Band at the Boone County Courthouse. This will begin at 7:30.
• Free cake will be served as a thank you during the Twilight Festival’s final day.
--Geoff George
Dance crew Mule Kicker Cloggers perform at Twilight Festival in September 2005.
Iceiss Starr blows fire during a show in the first night of the June 2008 ...
The reason supplied for its curt cut-off was simple: The festival had run its course. Similar to Gov. Matt Blunt’s stunning January announcement that he wouldn’t seek re-election because he had done all he could, Twilight’s end contributes to this quitter mentality. It’s getting old, and it doesn’t fit the situation.
Twilight’s attendance reached 12,000 at its peak in 2007, and revenue for businesses clocked in at more than $2 million in 2004. With an approximate $40,000 budget each year, the profit was sizable. So what actually happened?
Turns out that the answer isn’t nearly as simple as originally stated. Two opposite forces — unruly teens and development-driven city insiders — contributed to one clear termination troubled with bureaucracy.
Humble Beginnings
Every Thursday in June since 1989, Twilight Festival took place downtown. Businesses extended hours, and a few bands performed. In the mid-’90s, the festival grew to include Thursdays in September, and by 2000, it was expanding rapidly.
“I came on board in 2000, and we started adding to it right away,” says Carrie Gartner, Twilight Festival organizer and director of the Central Columbia Association. Twenty to 30 bands played, organizers promoted a kids’ camp to keep activities family-oriented, and carriage rides continued. Expansion also coincided with the convention bureau’s new hotel tax, says Gartner. Organizers were encouraged to take the event to a new level and make it something bigger, something that would attract more Columbians in addition to mid-Missourians.
In June 2005, Twilight Festival hosted a Mid-Missouri Idol competition that attracted attendees from outside the region. “We would have people call us from other states,” Gartner says of the competition. “That drew a huge crowd.”
But the crowd changed. Poppy owner Barbara McCormick has personally seen the city transform during her 26 years as a downtown businesswoman. She has worked during many Twilight Festivals and has mixed feelings about its sudden departure. She’s relieved as a business owner but disappointed as a citizen. The store would bring on at least three or four extra employees to accommodate additional shoppers, but McCormick says that traffic decreased in recent years and the clientele got younger.
“The mix of families versus kids has changed,” she says. “There’s no question that there are more teenagers than families. At least from our perspective as having had to work during the festival and seeing the mix of people.”
Although the store welcomes all shoppers, the shift was noticeable. “We have no problem with the teenagers,” McCormick says. “A customer is a customer. But because the intent was to be geared toward families, in that respect, it stopped working.”
Although Gartner insists that there were always teenagers at the event (and that they always marketed toward them), the new idol competition definitely brought in more than in years past. The feel of the event was different, too. Regular attendees were lost as new patrons flooded the area. Merchants noticed the impact as they made fewer transactions yet still needed additional staff on hand to watch for shoplifting and overall issues of crowding.
As recent as last year, attempts were made to accommodate the changing demographic while still appealing to the family crowd Twilight used to attract. In 2007, family-oriented activities were set up in Flat Branch Park. Events such as concerts were geared toward a more adult audience and set up on the newly closed Ninth Street. For the first time, the festival gained clearance to shut the street down, increase foot traffic and bring in more musical talent. But problems persisted, and the police were left to deal with them. These weren’t just issues of petty theft but rather riot-sized fights.
Teenage Invasion
When Zim Schwartze moved into the position of East District Captain in 2003, she coordinated the police presence at Twilight Festival. She asked around five officers to volunteer to work the festival. They walked around and made sure everything was under control. For the first couple of years, that was sufficient. Soon, it wasn’t enough.
The Mid-Missouri Idol competitions were turning points for Schwartze who says the events drew even more people to the area and a heightened need for security measures. It was during the Idol event’s second year that problems worsened significantly.
“In June 2006, we began noticing a large group of young folks that would gather near and around Boone County Courthouse Square,” says Schwartze, who is currently the Community Operations Division Commander. “Most weren’t partaking in the festival. They were loud, rude, using foul language, smoking, assaulting and throwing things at people.”
Naturally, complaints started to pour in from citizens and business owners alike. Problems were similar to those the Columbia Mall faced before instituting parental-guidance rules that require patrons under the age of 17 be accompanied by an adult after 4 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. That solves the problem at the mall but pushes it elsewhere, says Schwartze.
“Many of them were being dropped off or walking into the area,” Schwartze says of the teens at Twilight. “It’s harder to control when you’re in a public place. You can’t say ‘get out’ unless they’re trespassing on private property.”
In September 2006, officers upped security and called in the county’s sheriff’s department. Uniformed officers were stationed at the courthouse, but problems remained.
Schwartze says officers started seeing known drug dealers near the festival, and concerns mounted for what was to come in 2007. She requested more deputies and talked directly with the organizers to make additional changes.
Six to eight officers were assigned specifically to Twilight, and yet issues persisted. In June 2007 and 2008, activities ended, but some attendees weren’t ready to go home. Instead, a group of more than 100 teens moved on to Douglass Park where fights erupted. In 2007, police arrested two teens. In 2008, rumors spread that someone flashed a gun.
Finally, Schwartze asked Gartner last year to stop the Twilight Festival. And she got her wish.
“Last year I started telling Ms. Gartner I wish they would just stop Twilight,” Schwartze says. “We have so many other events.”
These other downtown festivities such as Summerfest and Roots ‘n Blues are the lucky ones largely free of teenage ruckus. Attendance is higher, and serving alcohol immediately calls for more security. Schwartze says there might just be too many people at these events for teens to get into trouble. With problems continuing at Twilight, the force was being stretched too thin.
“From a police standpoint, we couldn’t keep up anymore,” Schwartze says.
New Plans
As security became problematic, and only two city employees were stuck with the burden of organizing eight Twilight Festival events a year, talks of large-scale city development were underway.
Two organizations currently comprise the District. The Special Business District deals with matters of beautification, preservation, business recruitment and economic development. City merchants run the Central Columbia Association, which promotes shopping, dining and entertainment within the District. With the establishment of a Community Improvement District, the two current organizations would merge and gain more power in spending and taxation. Overarching goals would also shift to include the larger issues of business retention and business development.
Progressive Urban Management Associates President Brad Segal traveled from Colorado to discuss restructuring. After consulting, interviewing and writing a strategic plan, city higher-ups also decided to reduce festival-type events such as Twilight.
“Across the board, regardless of the organization people felt affiliated with, we needed to be focusing more on long-range business development rather than promotions,” Gartner says.
After events were cut, the focus could switch to keeping businesses downtown, increasing security and making money. “The nature of the downtown has changed; the nature of the city has changed,” Gartner says. “It’s no longer us putting on parades. Twilight Festival kind of fit into that.”
The main change, however, would come in the form of combining the two current organizational entities into one. One benefit of the potential switch to a CID would be an increase in the District’s sales tax. By raising it one half of a cent, the tax would match other Columbia stores such as those in the mall.
“We could bring our sales tax into parity with everyone else and then use that money to hire more people to clean the sidewalks, or we can use that money to do a business recruitment effort where we pull in more new businesses as buildings are built,” Gartner says.
The upsides are plentiful, according to both Gartner and Segal. But the process is a long one, and it’s only just begun. It can take more than a year to figure out the details of such a shift before a vote is required to move on to the instituting phase.
“We’re trying to respond to what the primary stakeholders want that downtown to be,” Segal says.
But what will fill Twilight’s spot? Other festivals in town are genre specific and not as kid-friendly as Twilight once was. It also doesn’t look like any new events are in the works to fill the family-fun void. For now, locals can enjoy four more Twilights as the festival returns to its roots with a few bands and low-key activities. Frankly, however, it’s a bit sad that the exit of a 19-year-old event only calls for a cake, limited discussion and no hoopla. Clear-cut explanations wouldn’t have hurt either.
