The monthly meeting of Seattle’s Special Event Committee involving reps from City Hall, SPD, SFD and many, many more met this week — and, for once, the Capitol Hill Block Party was not on the agenda. After getting a third day of the event again approved by the committee last month, Block Party producer Dave Meinert tells us things are looking good for CHBP as July approaches, part of the line-up is announced and tickets for the festival expected to draw 20,000 to the neighborhood go on sale:
…everything is moving forward with Block Party.
We make the initial announcement about lineup and tickets this Wednesday
We are having our second community meeting May 23rd, 6pm – 8pm, at the upstairs floor of Caffe Vita (1005 E Pike St).
According to the process described at the events committee meetings, Meinert and producers will be working out details of safety issues around the Block Party space with representatives from SPD and Seattle Fire before the final permit for the event is issued later this summer. In past years, the permit has come mere weeks before the festival.
The second community meeting comes three months after a first session in February. At that meeting, as the permit for the third day still seemed like more of a question after a group of local merchants expressed ongoing frustration with the growing size of the festival, many community members spoke up and expressed their support for the annual music event.
Meinert and organizers have made notable efforts around the 2011 festival to better work with Pike/Pine businesses affected by the large crowds, closed streets, fencing — and some of the less desirable human activities that get mixed into a bunch of people having a really good time. We’ve documented some of these new efforts here and hope to cover the festival from outside the festival this summer for a continued look at its impacts — positive and negative — on the neighborhood.
For now, there will be a lot of excited people this week as the 2011 Capitol Hill Block Party takes shape.
You can learn more at http://capitolhillblockparty.com/
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Meinert is an owner of Big Mario’s Pizza, a CHS advertiser.
