Arts and crafting compromise: A town hall Thursday offers a preview of possible changes for Fiesta Hermosa
Hermosa Beach native Jeanne Rosen of Jeanne Dana Studios has exhibited her cast-paper sculptures at the Hermosa Beach fiestas for over two decades. Photo
Along with traditional debate features like opening statements and policy questions, the second candidate forum in the run-up to the recent Hermosa Beach City Council election featured a “lightning round” that prevented evasive answers. Candidates received binary questions, and indicated “yes” or “no” with only the raise of a paddle.
“Do you think Fiesta Hermosa is beneficial to the City of Hermosa Beach?” moderator Julie Hamill asked the candidates for the fourth question.
The novel format prevented candidates from immediately explaining or contextualizing their responses, and all candidates answered in the affirmative. Without words to analyze, viewers focused on physical gestures, like the height a candidate’s padde reached, or the eagerness with which a candidate thrust it in the air. Incumbent Stacey Armato, who was reelected as the top vote-getter in last week’s council elections, was the last to respond. She raised her paddle to shoulder height, then flipped it from “No” to “Yes” before lifting it higher. (Armato’s hesitancy on several of the night’s questions came in part from her concern that, as an incumbent, she would potentially have to cast votes on the issues in the future.) A mixture of jeers and claps filled the Beach House Hotel event room.
The forum was organized by the Hermosa Beach Chamber of Commerce and Visitor’s Bureau. Under a contract with the city, the Chamber puts on the semiannual Fiesta Hermosa. The proceeds provide the organization with its operating budget, and fund a variety of other events, including the holiday tree lighting, New Year’s Even celebration, St. Patrick’s Day parade, and multiple sidewalk sales. The contract expired after this year’s Labor Day Fiesta, and the city and Chamber will renegotiate it by year’s end. (The chamber is still scheduled to put on the events remaining in 2017.)
Before renegotiating the chamber contract, the city is gathering community input on the Fiesta. Staff and elected officials say that over the last few years, residents have complained that the Memorial Day and Labor Day weekend events have become overly commercialized, abandoning its original arts-and-crafts focus and no longer serves the local community.
Last summer, the council appointed a subcommittee, consisting of Armato and mayor pro tem Jeff Duclos, to gather “public input and policy considerations” related to the events. Their efforts kick off with a town hall this Thursday evening (Nov. 16). Some community members are concerned that the town hall and subcommittee are a pretext for drastic changes, including canceling one of the two Fiesta weekends, a charge city officials deny.
“This is not a commission to take the Fiesta away, or reduce it to one weekend. It’s to facilitate public comment on what the community feels is important for a catalyst event,” said Nico deAnda-Scaia, assistant to City Manager Sergio Gonzalez.
Chamber board president Michael Goergen, who will make a presentation at Thursday’s town hall, said he is hopeful about the Fiesta’s future. But he is wary of attempts to impose an “agenda” on the event. He referenced a recent city-funded video, designed to show a typical Saturday night on Pier Plaza, which was criticized as a biased depiction of the area.
“I was told the purpose for the subcommittee is to gather constructive thoughts from the community. If it turns out that this is like the video, something manipulated to support one person’s position, I’m going to be disappointed. My only interest is in gathering positive input,” Goergen said.
Penciling out
Fiesta Hermosa began in the 1960s as Fiesta de las Artes, a one-day event held on the stretch of Pier Avenue between Hermosa Avenue and The Strand. It was organized by the Chamber and by members of the Colony Arts and Crafts and focused on artwork and jazz at the nearby Lighthouse. (The area, now known as Pier Plaza, was open to cars at the time.)
DeAnda-Scaia has been digging into past Fiesta contracts in advance of Thursday’s meeting. He said the festival expanded to two days in the early 1970s, then to one three-day weekend in 1979. By the early 1980s, the Fiesta had expanded north along Hermosa Avenue to 14th Street, but was still dominated by arts and crafts booths. Starting in the mid ‘90s, the Fiesta began generating more revenue, and the Chamber adjusted the fee schedule, charging different amounts for commercial vendors than for arts and crafts booths.
Today, arts and crafts booths enjoy a steep discount. For the most recent Fiesta on Labor Day Weekend of this year, the fee for each arts space was $675, along with a $25 jury fee for evaluating submissions, and a $40 city vendor fee for applicants without a Hermosa business license. By comparison, a food vendor wishing to sell one type of item would pay $975, as well as additional clean-up and electricity fees. “Sponsors” or commercial vendors face the steepest fee schedule of all. The smallest booths cost $2,000, while the largest displays, of up to 40 feet by 60 feet, can run up to $16,000. In all categories, organizers give preference to applicants from within the city, said Maureen Hunt, interim president and CEO for the Chamber.
The differentiated fee schedule exists in order to boost the number of artists. But skeptics say that has created a different kind of incentive: encouraging the presence of commercial vendors at the expense of artists in order to boost the Fiesta’s profitability, padding the Chamber’s bottom line while diminishing the event’s community feel.
According to a presentation that former Chamber President Kimberlee MacMullan gave to the City Council over the summer, before the Labor Day Fiesta, the Chamber grossed $495,465 from the Memorial Day Fiesta, and netted $211,423 after expenses. After applying mid-year event, administrative and operation costs, the Chamber had a profit of $49,222.
The Chamber has struggled with deficits in recent years, in part due to a $100,000 contribution to the city several years ago. That contribution was intended to support revitalization along Pacific Coast Highway and Aviation Boulevard, and a marquee sign near the Community Center. MacMullan said in July that, after the rest of the year’s expenses, including an event-hosting schedule that is tilted toward the holiday season, she expected the Chamber to break even, or have a small amount to be put in reserves. (The Chamber is a 501(c)(6) nonprofit, MacMullan said, which is permitted under the law to end the year in the black.)
MacMullan left her position at the beginning of this month. Hunt, her interim replacement, came on last week, and during an interview on Monday did not have a financial breakdown for the Labor Day Fiesta immediately available. But she said she assumed MacMullan’s projection was accurate.
Complaints about the Fiesta’s commercialism are often paired with an admiring comparison to Manhattan Beach’s Old Hometown Fair, which takes place over two days each year on the first weekend of October. That event has been entirely free of commercial sponsorship for its 45-year history, and continues to be overseen by an all-volunteer board.
Manhattan Beach City Councilmember Richard Montgomery, a past president of the Home Town Fair, credited the fair’s community-centric vibe to its historic focus on providing opportunities for the city’s nonprofits. But he said comparisons between the Hometown Fair and the Fiesta were problematic. He noted that unlike in Hermosa, where the city bills the Chamber for overtime by police, fire and public works staff, Manhattan gives the fair committee a fee waiver for costs it incurs.
“It’s not really apples to apples. They’re different entities,” Montgomery said.
Going to the mattresses
Fiesta attendees enjoy a performance by a Beatles cover band. Some residents have complained that the event has grown increasingly commercialized.
Shortly after Labor Day, a post on a Facebook forum devoted to Hermosa Beach issues featured an image of a Fiesta stand selling mattresses, prompting dozens of comments about how the Fiesta’s booth selection was diminishing the event’s community feel.
“Most people would disagree with selling mattresses. That needs to go. The booths should be mostly arts and crafts. You don’t want stuff from Kohl’s” displayed on Hermosa Avenue, resident Ira Ellman said in an interview.
Hunt said that, apart from the fee schedule and preference given to locals, the parceling out of spaces varies from year to year. She said there is not a fixed allotment of art-versus-commercial spaces, and that it comes down to satisfying individual space requirements, like location within the fiesta for longtime vendors.
Organizers jury all artist submissions, but the process for selecting commercial applicants is not as formal, Hunt said. Several years ago, the Chamber faced criticism for the presence of a Hustler Casino booth. Hunt said that the Chamber learned from the incident, and denied the casino a booth in subsequent years, even though the decision risked a lawsuit because Hustler was a chamber member.
“We walk a fine line, between people applying, and residents and others attending the show. It’s hard to make everybody happy, and it comes down to common sense. We do need the commercial vendors: that’s where we make our money,” Hunt said.
Goergen said that the board is willing to consider subcommittee reforms about booth selection.
“In our own meetings we joke about the mattress salesman. It must be worth it to that person, because they’re paying quite a bit of money,” Goergen said. “If we could get rid of one commercial vendor and replace that vendor with three artists, we would love it. If you take 10 grand away from us, we’ll have to find some place to pick it up. But we would welcome that possibility, welcome that challenge,” Goergen said.
But he said more significant changes, like limiting the Fiesta to a single weekend, would make it impossible for the Chamber to continue hosting the civic events on which it does not make money, like the tree lighting, and would compromise its ability to fund day-to-day advocacy for local businesses.
Resident Ray Dussault said he makes a point of staying in town during Fiesta weekends. He noted that local nonprofits make money from their beer garden booths. MacMullan estimated that, counting tips and an alcohol awareness donation from the Chamber, nonprofits earn about $40,000 from the Fiesta.
Dussault said he believes the subcommittee is driven by a residents whose antipathy toward the Chamber dates to the 2015 vote on oil.
“They’re just trying to hurt the Chamber. They don’t care that it’s going to hurt the town as well,” Dussault said.
The subcommittee was established through a unanimous vote. But Councilmember Carolyn Petty, in casting her vote in favor, cautioned against being swayed by a small segment of the population.
“Five people say, ‘We want one Fiesta,’ and we say, ‘Let’s talk about that.’ We just can’t be a city like that. I don’t know where this ‘one Fiesta’ concept even came from,” Petty said.
Armato repeated staff denials that the subcommittee had an agenda. She said that the town hall would likely be followed by surveys of residents to gauge where opinion on the issue stood.
“I want what the community wants. If that means we need to tinker with vendors, if they want to change the music, if they want different weekends, I’m here to help,” Armato said.
Why is it always this way?
Although city officials have presented the subcommittee as a response to rising concerns about the Fiesta, criticisms of the events are nothing new.
Tim McDermott grew up in Manhattan and Hermosa Beach, and attended Mira Costa High School. He is the longtime host of the Bomb Shelter, an eclectic weekly radio show on KXLU, and ran Scooter’s Records just off Pier Avenue from 1996 to 2004. And for six years before that, he worked at the same location when it was Alternative Groove, a record store run by Theologian Records founder Marc Theodore.
McDermott now lives in Los Angeles, and looking back at Fiestas past brought only groans.
“In my experience, it does nothing for neighborhood businesses, other than create an obstacle for people living in the neighborhood to get down there,” McDermott said. “If you’re going to run a business two blocks from the beach, and you can’t make money on a holiday weekend in the summer, then something bigger is wrong. Fiesta clogged the streets, and prevented locals from wanting to go downtown.”
Lori Ford, owner of Gum Tree Shop and Cafe and Gum Tree Kids on Pier Avenue, said that despite the crowds, the Fiesta weekends themselves are actually slower than normal for her businesses. But she also viewed the events in terms of the overall benefits that they bring for the area’s shops.
“It’s tough on our business, and our numbers are usually down that weekend. But we recognize that the weekends are used to fund all these things that are really good for our business: the sidewalk sales, the parade, the Tree Lighting. All of those things we would lose if the Chamber didn’t have the funds from the Fiesta,” Ford said. Many of these events were once organized by the city, but the Chamber agreed to take them on when they were threatened by budget shortfalls during the Great Recession.
The comments from the two store owners reveal that the Fiesta tends to impact downtown retailers differently than it does restaurants and taverns, for whom the weekends are among the busiest of the year. Thanks to constant customer turnover, servers and bartenders working on and around Pier Plaza said the amount of tips they made on those weekends rivaled their take on the Fourth of July, and said that the loss of one of the Fiestas would be a major financial hit.
Retailers, however, are a shrinking part of the business mix in downtown. In recent years, they have struggled to meet escalating rents in the area, and have shuttered amidst diminished sales from increased online shopping. Bars and restaurants have had an easier time. But the biggest difference is the increasing prevalence of offices, which are closed on weekends and indifferent to the Fiesta’s impacts. The former Scooter’s Records location at 200 Pier Avenue is now largely offices, are are the properties surrounding it.
For the Fiesta, changing times have meant more than a proliferation of commercial stands. Recent improvements include a “Siesta” tent to escape the heat, and structural changes by organizer Bell Events that won praise from accessibility activist Geoff Hirsch. Chamber board president Goergen said that other changes, like the rollout of a wine garden in the parking lot near Laurel Tavern, are being discussed. Nostalgia for the smaller Fiesta of old, he said, is misplaced.
“Granted it’s not the art and jazz festival it used to be outside the Lighthouse. But then again the Lighthouse isn’t what it used to be. Things change,” Goergen said.