Yep, wouldn’t be original but I do think it would be cool. The Dreamville Ferris wheel was pretty small. A huge one would provide even better views and higher capacity.
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And Seattle, Chicago, London, etc, etc, that’s my only issue with the big wheels. They are ubiquitous at this point. Would love something more original but they are fun.
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The Ferris Wheel in Vegas has some the cars equipped with bars. All you can drink for 30 mins, LOL!
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Yeah that was the nicest one I’ve ever been to. We could have something similar with the design theme being around sunflowers and the Dix Park logo colors. (Minus the bars in the cars)
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That is great that he did that. Keeps this thing going in people’s minds, not just making it a completely new and separate festival. Perception matters.
And yeah, I was downtown a little and also have seen the pictures. That festival plus First Friday gets downtown really alive, and I love that. It’s what I want downtown to actually be like most of the time.
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ride the Big Dix? chars.
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There are a lot of things to critique Fayetteville St for, but its ability to host events so well is a huge perk. Closing it off from the Capitol to Lenoir is great for large events. People as far as the eye can see.
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It’s basically what it was optimized for. I think the critique right now is that we’re looking for something that keeps local retail/restaurants buzzing on that street 7 days a week, 16 hours a day. Events may be hampering that vision, I think.
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Interesting thought that events could be hampering that vision. I feel like there’s a middle ground that could be found where we maximize for daily living but events could still prosper.
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Housing, housing, and more housing.
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And shopping. People are wandering around looking for shops.
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For sure housing but I’m on this kick right now that the events we have run in a silo, that the shops and restaurants we do have are not included.
I love the one suggestion from the Fayetteville Street study saying that the tents should be lined down the middle, facing the shops, creating two walkways rather than the one down the middle. The latter, and existing setup, creates two dead zones between the storefronts and the back sides of the event tents. This is not ideal and I’d like to see us try this simple change and get feedback from event goers and shop owners.
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I completely agree with this! I absolutely hate that the sidewalks are not engaged unless there’s a stage type of set up and the retail tents aren’t there.
With tents facing the sidewalks, it gives event goers a path to go up one side and down the other without having to zigzag down the middle or possibly miss a tent or two in the process of meandering down the middle.
As a side note, with more housing comes more retail activity!
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I think this is an interesting idea as well. The counter-argument is that in the current setup visitors can see all the tents with a walk in one direction. If you do it the other way, you could only see half of them at a time. Counter-counter argument: maybe you need to walk up one way and back anyway to get return to your apartment/house/car/bike.
I definitely think it is worth a try b/c I agree that Fayetteville Street does events pretty well, but on regular days can seem pretty sleepy.
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There used to be a summer festival in Asheville called Bele Chere. It ran from 1977-2013. The festival started as an attempt to revitalize downtown Asheville, but it grew into something enormous: imagine the State Fair, with no admission fee, and lots of beer, on the streets of Downtown Asheville. Peaked at over 350,000 attendees, over a single weekend.
They discontinued it when it was evident that downtown was fully revitalized, and downtown shops actually complained that it was hurting their business. The festival was hugely popular, but was expensive to hold, made a huge mess, and had basically outlived its purpose.
Anyway, back to Raleigh, the goal is to make it so festivals are no longer needed in order to prop the city up. Maybe your suggestion of having the tents lined up down the middle facing the storefronts is a good step in that direction.
I continue to hold (though nobody here seems to agree with me) that in the long term, festivals, especially huge ones like Dreamville etc, should be held at the Fairgrounds rather than Dix. We want downtown to be lively on its own and not need festivals to prop it up with extra activity, while Dix is a public park that (ideally) should be open to the public 365 days a year.
Adding to the counter-counter, I can’t look in two directions at once so I usually end up doing a lap so I can focus on one side at a time.
I also think that it can get pretty uncomfortable when everybody at the event is packed into one channel in the middle of the roadway. There are times where it’s nearly impossible to move due to how crowded it is. Placing the tents in the middle facing outward (maybe with a thin “backstage” walkway that vendors can use to get around) would increase the space people could engage the vendors from and of course provide the local businesses opportunities for engagement simultaneously.
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I wonder if the current setup is better for vendors? Navigating a couple kegs on a dolly might be harder in a small shared walkway. And since you don’t want setup/breakdown/restocking activities to spill out into the pedestrian area, maybe making the vendors share a small(er) area to do all the “backroom” stuff is a non-starter for them?
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