Ironically, much of Savannah’s public hospitality simply disappears over St. Patrick’s Day, one of the city’s biggest festivals. We’ve worked so hard over the years to market the “party” around the religious and cultural holiday that we’ve ended up attracting the hardest drinkers and tacitly telling many locals and many potential visitors that they really shouldn’t even bother to come downtown at any time other than during the parade itself.

I know a lot of people here in Savannah don’t want to hear that, but consider the following:

• Several prominent, popular, and well-respected downtown businesses simply close their bathrooms for the multi-day holiday, even for paying customers. A few businesses manage this by pretending they don’t have any working bathrooms at all. (No need to name names — you know who you are, and I don’t blame you.)
• Some businesses — shops, tours, etc. — shut down completely during the festival period. We’re telling some of our best visitors — families, cultural tourists, wealthy shoppers, etc. — that they might as well forget about coming to Savannah for St. Patrick’s Day.
• Some hotels jack up their rates (gouging?) even though many of them still had rooms available this year right up until the St. Patrick’s Day weekend. A couple of cousins of mine who were coming through town on unrelated business had no trouble booking a room out near 95 just for the Saturday night; they got around paying the ridiculously high price by using accumulated travel points. And we had no trouble getting a same-day reservation for that Saturday night at Local 11 Ten — we might not even have been able to get a table with such late notice on either the Saturday before or the Saturday after the holiday.
• And we charge $5 for wristbands for outdoor drinking in the “control zone”. Drinking out of to-go cups is legal year-round in much of downtown, but over the last couple of St. Patrick’s Day celebrations we have created this extra cost and bureaucratic burden, which sends negative signals to the most coveted tourists and to locals who aren’t going to pay to do something they’re used to doing for free.

In terms of St. Patrick’s Day planning and regulation, we have followed a similar pattern over my nearly 20 years in Savannah: we market the holiday as a “party”, we have massive drunken crowds that descend on the nearest weekend, we overreact the following year with extra bureaucracy that discourages the kinds of visitors we most want, we then see attendance fall as the holiday moves to an awkward weekday or is marred by weather, and then we’re left having to reconsider how we do things yet again.

And that’s where we will be next year, like we were this year. The St. Patrick’s Day parade was on a Monday this year, and it rained a little. Next year it will fall on a Tuesday, which means that the logical festival period would have to run from Friday through Tuesday. It is obvious, however, that the 2014 bureaucracy didn’t really work for this year’s 4-day festival, and it certainly won’t work for a 5-day festival.

Some data on wristband sales from Eric Curl’s Soggy St. Patrick’s fest dries up drinkers:

St. Patrickâ€s Day Festival daily $5 wristband sales

Friday: 12,655

Saturday: 45,595

Sunday: 13,124

Monday: 8,199

Total number sold: 79,573 ($397,865 in revenue)

That’s almost exactly the same number of wristbands that sold in the much shorter festival in 2013. Consider those numbers for a second: huge Saturday, with dramatically smaller crowds on Friday and Sunday. And a steep drop off in sales on the actual day of the parade (paradegoers can drink without a wristband but they must have one if they want to drink outside after the parade finishes). Frankly, based on the sparse crowds in the City Market area on the afternoon of St. Patrick’s Day and the fact that a couple of wristband tents weren’t even open where they were supposed to be, I’m a little surprised that even 8,000 were sold that day.

By the way, the revenue goes to cover some costs and to pay for extra stages and bands (some of which were rained out this year and some of which were very poorly attended). I haven’t seen a number yet on the total cost of all the bands, wristband booths, additional staff time in planning, etc., but it was no doubt considerable.

Carrie Bligh with the Waterfront Association gives this explanation for the relatively weak numbers in Eric’s article: ““I have no doubt that if it didnâ€t rain, our sales would be in line with a four-day event.”

Yes, the numbers would have been higher if the weather had been better, but that quote reflects a complete misreading of the situation. We’re attracting mainly people from the immediate area for hard partying days like that Saturday. Many of those people have to work regular jobs and live their regular lives. Saturday was the logical day to come into town, so they took advantage of it. Those same people aren’t going to come into Savannah and get plastered for four straight days.

And let’s face it: the weather wasn’t atypical for March. It was a little rainy on Sunday, and it was wet and a little chilly on Monday, but I walked around all day in jeans, a fleece, and a baseball cap. I was fine.

Next year, the biggest partying/drinking day will probably still be on Saturday, but are we going to try to milk this thing into a 5-day festival?

By the way, I don’t know what kinds of private discussions are held among tourism professionals about the mess we’ve made of St. Patrick’s Day, but it’s worth noting that Visit Savannah’s Instagram and Facebook made little effort to promote the bands, the drunkenness, the “party”. I don’t mean that as criticism at all, by the way. These are typical Visit Savannah posts around St. Patrick’s Day:

So let’s market St. Patrick’s Day not as a big drunken party but as a beautiful spring weekend when the city’s culture and hospitality are truly on display. We’ll get big crowds, sure, some of which are looking to drink heavily, but the various downtown venues can book bands and offer specials to absorb the vast majority of those who just come to party.

Maybe we should concentrate on just making St. Patrick’s Day into the best version of Savannah instead of into some sad knockoff of Bourbon Street.

First off, the city is implementing a wristband policy ($5) for drinking outside in the “control zone” from Friday through Monday (except not during the parade itself). I am opposed to this policy, which I discuss in my upcoming City Talk column on Monday.

So here are just a bunch of links and other info that you might need:

The Savannah St. Patrick’s Day Parade Committee website has the parade route (below) plus information on parking, shuttles, etc.

The parade will begin at 10:15 a.m. on Monday. There will be major disruptions to normal parking and traffic patterns downtown, but especially in the neighborhoods east of Forsyth Park, beginning on Sunday.

Here’s the all-important map of portable toilets:
2014 St Patrick day portable toilets_201403071428570007

Click here for a chart of road closures.

Here’s the map of the wristband area and stages:

Click here for the full band schedule. Click here for Larry Jack Sammons’ live music recommendations at hissing lawns.

The Savannah-Chatham police Facebook page and Twitter feed will be chock full of useful info all weekend. Like this:

There will also be info on the City of Savannah’s St. Pat’s Facebook page and Twitter feed.

At the moment, the weather forecast looks pretty crappy, with a chance of rain picking up on Saturday night and pretty high chances of rain all day and night on Sunday and Monday.

More broadly, I oppose pretty much any measures that discourage public use of public spaces. See my recent post Maximizing public access to public places as a guiding principle of city management

Now we have some numbers on the number of wristbands sold on March 15 and 16 of this year. From Lesley Conn’s Savannah St. Patrick’s wristband sales near 80,000 sold:

At $5 each, the wristbands brought in $396,190. The city kept $1 from each sale, leaving the remaining $4 per sale, or $316,952, to be divided among the waterfront association, City Market Association and the Downtown Business Association. […]

Looking back to 2001, when a $5 wristband was required to drink inside the River Street control zone, sales were more robust than this year. The Waterfront Association reported sales of $424,000, which amounts to 84,800 sold. The festival also fell on a Friday-Saturday that year.

There were definitely more wristbands sold than I expected, but it was very difficult to formulate any sort of reasonable advance estimate. At the same time, 12 years ago we sold more wristbands only on River Street than we did this year in a much, much larger festival zone.

So that’s a clear indication that St. Patrick’s Day business is way down from what it was a decade or so ago. There are likely a variety of reasons for this, including the use of wristbands itself. Any time there are municipal decisions that set barriers for consumers, some consumers will be discouraged.

Many questions remain.

After the various business organizations cover their costs — the wristbands themselves, labor, the person-hours invested in planning, payment to bands and for the stages themselves, and so forth — how much money will they have left over? How will the wristband policies be implemented next year if the parade is held on the official St. Patrick’s Day, which is a Monday?

I’m curious to hear thoughts on any aspects of this policy and the numbers made public today. I’m especially hoping to hear some reactions from downtown business owners, including owners of establishments that serve alcohol and of businesses that actually see less sales and traffic during St. Patrick’s Day than on average spring weekends.

You can respond in the comments or email me at billdawers[at]comcast.net.

Thanks.

A reminder of this year’s “festival zone”:

That stretch of Abercorn gets an exceptionally diverse crowd, and there aren’t any barricades, which means there’s real interaction between marchers and spectators. Sometimes more than one would like . . .

I love the general ridiculousness of parades, especially this one since there’s so little pageantry. There aren’t many standout floats, so it’s just people and music, a mix of campiness, tradition, pathos, even boredom.

After the parade, I wandered north as far as Congress Street, then west as far as The Sparetime. Then I retreated homeward before things got too ridiculous.

I’ll have more to say about the entire day in my City Talk column on Tuesday.

Since I’m posting so many images here, I’ve kept the file sizes a little smaller than normal.

Enjoy.

From the Irish Central’s Irish deputy leader snubs Savannah St Patrickâ€s Day celebrations over ‘men only’ dinner:

Irelandâ€s Deputy Prime Minister has skipped a St Patrickâ€s Day trip to Savannah to avoid a Hibernian Order ‘male only†dinner.

Labor Party leader Eamon Gilmore dropped Savannah from his list of destinations as a government ambassador on Irelandâ€s national holiday.

The countryâ€s Minister for Foreign Affairs did visit nearby Atlanta.

High profile government ministers have attended the ‘men only†dinner in Savannah according to a report in the Irish Times. […]

He has opted instead to visit New Orleans on Saturday for St Patrickâ€s Day events before travelling on to Washington DC.

Gilmore insisted he would decline to attend any men-only event as part of any foreign travel programme.

He said: “Count me out – Iâ€m not doing it. I donâ€t believe in segregation either on a gender basis or on any other basis.”

From the AP’s Irish official skips Savannah St. Patrick’s Day due to men-only dinner:

William H. Bruggeman, president of the Savannah Hibernians, said he never heard any complaints about the group’s men-only membership from Gilmore or his staff.

“That sort of caught us by surprise because he wasn’t an invited guest,” Bruggeman said. “Of course we’d love to have had him and would have invited him if we knew he was going to be coming this way.”

Bruggeman said it’s the first time he’s heard of any government official – Irish or American – avoiding the dinner because it excludes women. Savannah Mayor Edna Jackson has agreed in her two years in office to let the city’s mayor pro tem, a man, attend the dinner in her place, saying she respects the Hibernians’ traditions.

And this:

Gilmore also had supporters back home. Gemma Hussey, former minister of Ireland’s Fine Gael party, said on Twitter the Savannah Hibernians had barred her from their dinner decades ago.

“Well done Eamon Gilmore – those Savannah Hibernians refused to have an Irish woman Minister (me) in the 80’s so now they get none,” Hussey tweeted.

The crowds tonight will be more intense than normal — maybe a lot more. There will be fights, arrests, and ridiculous drunken behavior.

And some people will have a whole mess of fun.

But the “festival zone” has been in effect since early this morning. That’s the area in which drinkers will need $5 wristbands to drink legally.

Bikes are banned from the zone, apparently even on streets that are still open to cars.

Anyone cited for an ordinance violation who is not a resident of Chatham County is likely to be taken to jail, according to recent statements by the police.

Is anyone who has been watching this overreach surprised that there are still hotel rooms available downtown and throughout the area?

Is anyone surprised that the screen captures that I just took — below — of the public live cams show so little activity?

I hope everyone has a safe time out there tonight and tomorrow during and after the parade.

But we’ve created all these layers of bureaucracy and closed so many streets for this?

Additional questions might be answered on this page.

The Savannah St. Patrick’s Day Facebook page posted about vacancies at the Hyatt, Andaz and Thunderbird. The subsequent comments note a number of other hotels downtown and in midtown with availability.

So did Savannah once again get ahead of itself in assuming that everyone wants to be here for our big, sloppy St. Patrick’s celebration and this year’s silly increases in bureaucracy?

I’m guessing yes, but we’ll know more in a few days.

I just checked availability at the Hyatt downtown, and there are rooms with king beds available for $399/night. With a river view, make that $499/night.

At prices like those, the hotels will make some real money even if they have lots of empty rooms.

But the widespread availability hardly suggests that we’ll see the kinds of visiting throngs that planners have been assuming.