Hello, neighbors & noisemakers,
The City of Ithaca is requiring that Porchfest (Sunday, Sept 22) work a bit differently this year, and we’d like your thoughts on the changes.
The city’s Special Events Team is concerned about pedestrians and audiences congregating in streets that are open to traffic during Porchfest. It’s their #1 safety concern, and ours as well. We’ve had some close calls with reckless drivers over the years, and it’s a scary thing. So, the Special Events Team has required that we make some changes to the layout of Porchfest, or else we’d be denied a permit for this year.
The plan is to close a large section of Fall Creek to vehicular traffic, bordered by E Lincoln Street on the north, Cayuga and Aurora streets on the west and east, and Farm Street on the south. This will ensure that crowds are free to move through the streets throughout the busy core of Porchfest, along Tioga and Utica Streets and all cross streets between Lincoln and Farm (except Tompkins). (If you live in that zone and need to get your vehicle in or out during Porchfest, we plan to have volunteers available as always to escort you.) We will also, as we have the last couple of years, close two blocks of Auburn Street, from Hancock to Jay; and W Marshall St / Willow Ave around Thompson Park, to accommodate food trucks and busy nearby performances. (See map below.)
Meanwhile, Cayuga, Aurora, Lincoln and Tompkins streets will be open to traffic, and closed to performances. This will ensure that the main thoroughfares through the neighborhood are open to traffic, and especially emergency vehicles, without crowds of stationary music lovers standing in the streets. We realize this will affect many performers who live on these streets or have had a long-standing porch to play on there. But as Porchfest’s popularity has grown, so have the crowds, and it has become too dangerous to continue allowing this mixture of audiences and vehicular traffic on the busiest streets.
This is where you come in. Our neighbors in Fall Creek, and our Porchfest performers, all have a huge stake in Porchfest. Do you love these changes? Do you hate them? Do you have ideas or thoughts that we should hear? We’re all ears. Please visit our survey here.
We really need your feedback, because this is a big change for Porchfest.
(Oh, and because many of you will be wondering: we expect to open performer signups on July 1.)
Here’s what this year’s tentative map looks like:
