Arts, Beats & Eats has 'Successful Year' for City

At their 7:30 p.m. regular meeting at City Hall Monday, city officials are expected to discuss a 2012 Arts, Beats & Eats (ABE) financial report. (See the attached PDF).

"Financially, 2012 was the most successful ABE Festival for the City with retained net income of $92,636.27 after repaying the Downtown Development Authority (DDA) it's $100,000 advance and it's 10 percent share of net income," City Manager Don Johnson wrote in a memo to commissioners.

"Our revenues were up, mostly because of good weather and our expenditures are down because we keep getting better at running it," Johnson said.   

Lessons learned

ABE producer Jon Witz agrees the city is getting better at running the festival due to "lessons learned" from the first two years. Those lessons helped the city realize management efficiencies, he said.

"It's great to see the city was ahead of the game. It wasn't even our best year," Witz said.

About 390,000 people attended the festival in downtown Royal Oak in 2012 — up 18 percent from 2011's attendance, which was hurt by very hot and steamy weather and storms. In 2010, which was the first year in Royal Oak, the festival had a record-breaking attendance of 423,000.

"I hope the event continues to have good momentum," Witz said.

In the meantime, the producer is busy working to get the festival's sound stabilized and resolve parking issues.

"We're working out problems with business parking," he said. "We want to have some alternative parking so people who just want to eat at a restaurant downtown don't have to pay $15 to park."

RELATED: