When the entertainment zone ordinance was enacted in June, the Oktoberfest celebration on the Promenade was presented as a good opportunity for seeing the legislation’s potential. Though I’ve been somewhat skeptical about the long-term benefits of rescuing downtown via alcohol and cannabis, outdoor drinking and Oktoberfest rituals definitely seemed like a natural fit.
So I headed over to the Promenade on September 27th for a couple hours in the late afternoon/early evening to check out the Germanic-themed event, and some of what I saw was exciting.
I counted almost 400 people on the 1200 block, which was the central location of the festivities. There was a makeshift stage with an energetic band surrounded by enthusiastic spectators, and while I can remember when a jam-packed crowd on the Promenade was just an ordinary weekend, that hasn’t been true for a long time.
City Manager Oliver Chi had good reason to be proud and relieved as he crowed about the event. “It was absolutely jumping,” he said at last week’s City Council meeting. “How cool is it to see that we still have that ability to create these spectacular moments in the city.”
It was very cool to see throngs of people on the Promenade; however, Chi was presenting only a partial picture.
I described the bustling activity on the 1200 block, but that wasn’t the situation on the 1300 and 1400 blocks (at least not while I was there). I counted only about 50 or so people along each of those two blocks, with less than 20 in total wearing the colored wristbands designating them as entertainment zone participants. But as sparse as those blocks may have seemed, they were far more populated than the eerily empty sidewalks on 2nd Street and 4th Street.
I decided to do an informal survey of the storefronts on or near the Promenade, going into 30 random shops and restaurants and asking how their foot traffic and sales compared to an average Saturday. It was highly unscientific, with most of the employees guesstimating, though some of the managers provided exact data from their registers. I’m hoping that Downtown Santa Monica (DTSM), Santa Monica Travel & Tourism (SMTT), and the city’s economic development team have collected more accurate information, but here’s what I was told:
Two of the 30 places I visited said they had doubled their sales from a typical Saturday, and six said they had a 50% increase. Another half dozen said they had a small uptick in business. But 12 of the 30 said there was no increase whatsoever, while five reported a noticeable decrease.
And five of the businesses I spoke with had no idea that Oktoberfest was taking place, including several located on the Promenade, which seems worthy of someone in leadership’s attention.
It’s unsurprising that it was food and beverage establishments near the Oktoberfest stage that experienced the greatest positive impact, and perhaps it should be equally unsurprising that it was mostly businesses not located on the Promenade that saw a negative impact. But it’s not clearcut, because some food establishments didn’t see any benefit, and a few retail stores, such as Patagonia and Aldo, reported significant gains.
I don’t think one informal survey proves anything, nor does one particular event. But there are some warning signs about the entertainment zone, including the potential to create financial winners and losers. Should the city be deciding which businesses succeed or fail? And can the city be sure it’s picking the right ones? The Council and DTSM have expressed eagerness for making the Promenade more experiential, yet Holey Moley and the Apple store were not among the places reporting increased foot traffic from Oktoberfest.
Despite the city manager’s rousing exuberance, Oktoberfest wasn’t the best of times in downtown Santa Monica history. But it certainly wasn’t the worst. There’s a more complicated tale to be told and reverberations to be discovered. The question is whether the people in charge are making the effort to discover them.
Devan Sipher can be reached at Unmuted.SMDP@gmail.com