THIS YEAR’S St. Patrick’s Day celebration comes at a time of both great promise and great uncertainty in Savannah.
Downtown has never been more engaging and more lively with visitors. There has never been such a wide range of retail and eating and drinking establishments catering to such a wide range of tastes.
As you can tell from the array of construction sites around town, the recession is long gone from Savannah. Our economy, or at least the sector of it involving tourism and corporate investment, is in robust good health.
But this very success has many of us questioning the nature of that success, who is benefiting, how we got here, and what do we do next.
While at least a quarter million people will visit downtown for this weekend’s festivities, filling our many hotels, oddly enough for a lot of locals the celebration might not be the dependable cash cow it once was.
Since last year’s celebration, I’ve spoken with several local bar owners who said their revenue was down significantly in 2016. They cited, among other things, the proliferation of cheap beer tents near the waterfront area, which directly compete with brick and mortar establishments that pay taxes and fees all year.
For years, the downtown food & bev community has said they make their entire profit for the year during the few days of the St. Patrick’s celebration. It’s that important.
But this is the first year I can remember when I’ve heard some business owners say they are not looking forward to St. Patrick’s Day, that in some ways it’s now more trouble than it’s worth.
While certainly there’s a bit of hyperbole in that — perhaps more than just a bit — within that sentiment is a grim harbinger for a city with so much invested, both financially and emotionally, in the success of the St. Patrick’s Day celebration.
This year’s wristband price hike to $10, while understandable given the associated costs which need to be funded, won’t exactly help the situation. Each wristband purchase is potentially a meal or a drink not bought from a local business which employs local people and pays local taxes.
Meanwhile, big corporate chains continue to invest here with an eye toward a local system that increasingly favors them over locally owned small businesses.
It’s a problem.
Downtown is now ringed with hotels, many of which have been allowed to rise significantly higher than traditional building designs we’re used to in the historic district.
Like tree branches competing with each other for sunlight, this “race to the top” means the Savannah skyline, especially near the waterfront, is increasingly like living inside a walled city.
Or, as some critics observe, a gated community for tourists.
One of the wonderful things about our St. Patrick’s Day celebration in Savannah is how it celebrates our own unique culture and history, specifically the contribution of the Irish Diaspora to local life and folkways since the colony’s founding.
It began as a completely organic celebration, mostly religious in nature. Its authenticity and genuine roots are prime reasons why it has become so popular for so many visitors for so long.
For as long as I can remember, folks have complained that such-and-such will “kill the goose that lays the golden egg” in Savannah, i.e. our St. Patrick’s Day parade and festivities.
None of those pessimistic predictions quite came true, and Savannah continues to be as attractive to visitors and investors as ever, and more so every year.
Hopefully that will continue, and my own pessimistic warnings will also fail to be fully realized.
It could very well be that downtown Savannah has attained the critical mass necessary to sustain economic health regardless of how overgrown the tourist sector has become.
But the fact remains that for many locals, downtown is becoming a place they, also, just visit.
Tourists in our own hometown.
I was a bit amused to see the plans for the “new and improved” Savannah River Landing. For those of you new-ish in town, Savannah River Landing (SRL) is the great expanse of concrete and soil just to the east of the Marriott.
Over a decade ago, the land was cleared for an ambitious planned mixed-use community which was set to be literally as big as the entire Historic District itself, sharing some design elements with Gen. Oglethorpe’s original town plan.
And then the Great Recession happened. SRL went idle, only recently being purchased by a new developer with a new plan.
The City of Savannah made a rare wise decision in not letting the Sand Gnats talk us into paying for a new stadium for the single-A ball club to go into the SRL space.
However, the newest plan still calls for more of a focus on larger-scale development.
In my mind, I read that as “more hotels.”
In other words, the great sucking sound you hear — of actual residents leaving and/or being priced out of downtown by tourism development, Airbnb rentals, etc. — will probably continue regardless.
Meanwhile, since the recession, the vast momentum of residential growth in Chatham County is nowhere near downtown.
Pooler has exploded, its business-friendly environment attractive not only for residents looking for affordable, safe housing, but for small business owners sick and tired of the runaround and obstacles in the City of Savannah proper.
St. Patrick’s Day will always live in Savannah. It will always be close to our hearts, and will always be a time of great celebration and good times.
But it will also serve as a yearly reminder of how decisions have consequences, some intended and some not.
This article appears in Mar 15-21, 2017.
I saw the dude they made grand marshal on TV. He is a country deputy, as I recall. He said this year’s”theme” was going to be “law enforcement.” Having lived downtown all my life and being a good ex-Catholic, I had always thought there was a constant “theme”–St. Patrick and his conversion of Ireland to Catholicism, So this old boy now has a new theme. Why not call it “The March on Rome?”
The investors you referred to, did they bring more than just another motel or hotel to put on the horizon? Once upon a time St. Patrick’s Day consisted of mass and then the parade. Now it has turned into mass, parade and a down scale version of Mardi Gras.
The $10 bracelet keeps people off of River St by charging a cover charge to access a public street. The business owners then deal with customers who don’t spend as much and don’t tip
Businesses need customers spending money in their establishments, not on the street by tent vendors. Also, the tents are controlled by the Waterfront Assoc and a long term lease is “owned” by a business group which owns multiple businesses on River St and other Locations.
Where else charges for wristbands to access the live music and portable potty’s? Nowhere
If I am not mistaken (and I could be) the wrist bands are only so you can carry a “to-go” drink on River Street. If you want to sit inside a bar and drink, no need for a wrist band, but if you want to take it out on the sidewalk you must have one.
The City makes money and I don’t think they really care if it has pushed out the locals. There are a few examples of “new” sources of revenue. The reserved parking spots before the St. Pat’s parade, the wrist bands (and the confusion around these probably makes the city even more money) as well as the permit fees and taxes from the hotels and temporary concession tents. The revenue missed because of the cheap beer tents is very real and very significant. When the local places were told they could no longer sell cheap beer from the doorway of their establishment, you began to see the revenues fall. That was the harbinger, that and the wrist bands and now Bar Cards. It’s all been down hill for locals and up up up for corporate St. Pat’s ever since.
The F&B folks are now hassled by the city for “Bar Cards”. Servers and bartenders are forced to purchase this card after a convoluted process of an online quiz, multiple papers having to be notarized and fees paid and only on a certain day of the week between certain hours of that day. And no notary on premises. Then the background check. Exactly what they are checking for that would disqualify someone to serve alcohol, I have no idea. I would think they would be more concerned about the background of the people DRINKING the alcohol, but maybe that makes too much sense.
Raids are conducted to check your papers. The establishment must stop doing business in the middle of a huge rush, everyone must show their papers, those who do not have their papers are taken away (ok, sent home, but ‘taken away’ is more dramatic), leaving the restaurant short handed in the middle of a shift. Maybe even while making your cocktail or trying to serve you food. This, obviously does not further the profits of local businesses and I am unable to bring to mind anything that it does accomplish. It does make me think about the staggering numbers of hospitality workers, most are the least able to afford it, that have contributed to the coffers of the city. Just take a moment to think about THOSE numbers…..
In short, I haven’t spoken to a single local that is looking forward to the parade or any other event. There are still some folks who have access to homes or apartments downtown and therefore have a lovely place from which to enjoy the festivities but they are dwindling. For that matter, I know of only a few folks who enjoy downtown at all. Most shudder at the thought of getting anywhere near it these days.
Like much of the other foolishness the city stages, it is probably totally illegal to charge someone $10 to use a public street. All that folderol about people in bars needing “papers” is likely illegal too. I don’t know why the F&B people don’t hire a good lawyer and have this yoke taken off their necks. People running things here are just rubes off the street who employ high school dropouts for the most part.
Crackpots and out-of-towners hoping to skim a quick buck give them these Stalin-like ideas and they see it as a way to squeeze money out of a captive population, which is not organized, like bar and restaurant workers, tour guides, etc. If such folks had a union or even an association and bloc-voted against these dirtbags, things would change quickly.
The city hall gang backed off like they had hugged a hot stove when the tour guide group sued them. Hope the bar people will do the same–soon.
This year’s Grand Marshal is most definitely NOT a county deputy, not even close. His brother (who IS a class act, by the way) is the deputy Sheriff AND was General Chairman of the Parade Committee this year. There were lots of us looking at each other asking “huh?” when we heard the “this year’s theme” malarkey, trust me. He may have gotten himself elected Grand Marshal, but he’s not exactly beloved, or even respected. But that’s Parade Committee politics, and I’m not going there.
Well, famous, I don’t know the fellow. I only saw him being interviewed by I think WTOC (a bunch of half-drunk ying-yangs in green blazers sitting around a circular table.) THEY-WTOC–not me –WTOC, said he was with Chatham County law enforcement. In fact he looked like a heavy-lidded, on-the-take, sleazy flatfoot out of a Raymond Chandler novel, and he DID claim that the “theme” of this year’s long-traditional Irish-style parade long devoted to the heritage of St. Patrick was “law enforcement.” He said it loud and clear, too. From the look plastered across his face, he didn’t look all that likeable, either, as you assert.
I think you can access the WTOC back stories. If you don’t believe me, check their video files. I thought the fellow was a complete lunatic and I don’t care who his brother is.