Friday, Jun. 19, 2009

Two Belleville businesses worried about plans for Pride Festival

BELLEVILLE -- A couple of downtown business owners are feeling a little left out.

The city's second annual Metro East Pride Festival will be held from 2 to 10 p.m. Saturday downtown and organizers expect 3,000 to 5,000 people to attend.

But Ed Gagen, co-owner of Castletown Geoghegan restaurant and Sharon Noblitt, co-owner of Acropolis restaurant, both located on West Main Street near the event, said Friday they had just found about additional street closures and the moving of the center of activity from one side of the party to the other.

They also think more metro-east restaurants should have been invited to participate as food vendors. Neither Castletown nor Acropolis was invited, the owners said, and many vendors are from Missouri.

According to the Web site for today's event, at least two metro-east companies will provide food: Swiney Ribbers BBQ, a catering business based in Belleville; and Stowers BBQ from Fairview Heights. Pam's Chicago Style Dogs & More, of St. Louis, and Sweet Meat Stix of St. Ann, Mo., also are on the food vendor list.

Jessie Arms, the festival's coordinator, said, "We made mistakes, we'll do better next year, and we know that at the end of the day, everybody's going to have a little profit in their pockets and a big smile on their face."

Gagen said Friday that he wishes festival organizers would have included him in deciding to close a major traffic access point for his restaurant -- First Street between A and Washington streets. While he knows the extra people downtown will provide some business, he worries his regular customers won't be able to get to the place.

"It doesn't have anything to do with the event, or who's organizing the event, or anything of that nature," Gagen said about his concerns. "But it should benefit everyone in this area ... There needs to be more openness and involvement when they have events of this size."

According to Mayor Mark Eckert, the First Street closure, requested by the organizers, was approved by the City Council in February. Gagen said that's about the time he started meeting with organizers to let them know he wanted to keep that street open. He thought they understood that.

Gagen and Nesbitt also had just found out Friday about organizers' plans to move the event stage from near Nesbitt's restaurant, which is just west of Second Street on West Main Street to just east of Castletown Geoghegan's, which is located just west of First Street.

Gagen isn't keen on having the stage right outside his restaurant. He's worried about the hoards of people that might try to use his restrooms, and he's concerned that noise from the stage will compete with his customers' conversations.

Nesbitt said she ordered extra food and scheduled extra workers in anticipation of the crowd that would come in with entertainment right outside the restaurant door.

"Now we don't know if it's going to pay off or not," she said.

She said she feels like most of the activity at other festivals is concentrated on east side of the fountain.

"We always thought this was the one time we'd have everything right here," she said. "We were planning to have entertainment right outside door. They're going to move it down to the square."