‘A great loss’: Business owners and patrons react to PVDFest changes

Ah. Well. Surely Twitter and Change.org petitions are not real life. What about one of the popular new restaurants downtown? Do they feel like the city is taking their concerns into account?

“No,” said Julia Broome, owner of Kin Southern Table and Bar on Washington Street. “I don’t think they chose to listen to a lot of the businesses, or asked how it would affect us.”

Broome said that Kin probably had its best day of the year financially at last year’s PVDFest downtown. Now the festival is moving to another part of the city — the area by the pedestrian bridge.

“To not have it in this area this year will be a great loss,” Broome said.

But the reaction in the area of the city where much of the activity would move has not been overwhelmingly positive, either.

“Do I have concerns? Yes,” said Sharon Steele, the president of the Jewelry District Association and a critic of former mayor Jorge Elorza. She cited the planned closure of vehicle traffic on South Water Street and the ability of the area to handle both a PVDFest and WaterFire in one night. The Boston Globe tried to reach some of the businesses along South Water, to no avail, but some are concerned, said Steele, who also fought the installation of a bike lane on South Water Street.

But while many critics were up in arms over the decision not to allow open containers of alcohol at this year’s PVDFest, Steele was not.

“The rule of law is finally back,” Steele said.

Change is sometimes hard. Smiley is facing an early test of just how hard it can be, and how it’s impossible to please everyone, especially when it comes to a beloved cultural event.

“I think we’re more resistant to change than others,” Smiley said after a ribbon-cutting at an apartment building on Weybosset Street. “That’s not to say there aren’t going to be incredible local restaurants who will be happy to serve you a drink. But the festival itself is going to be much more centered on the art, the performances, the productions this year, and less on a street fair vibe.”

There’s still more about PVDFest that could have people singing a different tune, like a to-be-announced musical headliner. The event will take place from Sept. 8 through Sept. 10. A WaterFire is also planned for Sept. 9.

And although the critics have been vocal, Smiley does have his defenders.

“I think what Mayor Smiley is doing is upgrading it to being more family-oriented and culturally oriented, which I think is going to be good for the city,” said Joseph R. Paolino Jr., a developer and former mayor of Providence.

PVDFest started in 2015 under Elorza’s administration as a day of arts, culture, and revelry. Tens of thousands of people thronged the streets downtown, sipped cocktails out of pineapples, and danced in foam at block parties.

In the 2022 campaign to replace the term-limited Elorza, Smiley had telegraphed changes to PVDFest – including a suggestion that hoteliers and the local economy might benefit from a different date. Smiley won the race, and the city followed through, announcing in March that the date would change from the second weekend of June to September.

But even more changes were in store. Recently, – right around the weekend when PVDFest would have been in previous years, actually – word started to get out. Documents outlining the changes were posted online. Podcaster Victor Baez, better known by his Twitter name SOUND, re-posted them on social media. It blew up.

Baez said business owners have been contacting him with their concerns. Smiley “is now taking away something that was great for the city,” Baez said.

“Change is good but not when you are doing it without community input and don’t provide a substantial reason on why these changes are occurring,” Ward 6 Councilman Miguel Sanchez said in an e-mail.

To some, like Michael Costa – better known by his stage name DJ Rukiz – the changes seem like an effort to minimize the festival.

“This is not the time to do that, after all these businesses went through with COVID,” Rukiz said.

And Jonesy Mann, the operations director for the downtown nonprofit arts organization AS220, said the change in location would affect commercial tenants in buildings they own, like Viva Mexico and Muldowney’s Pub, and make it harder for AS220 to participate.

Jeremy Duffy of the Guild, which has a beer garden in the Innovation District Park by the pedestrian bridge, said in an e-mail that they “very much look forward to working with the District Park, PVDFest and the Mayor’s office on this great event.”

City officials say the changes will benefit, not hinder, local businesses. Planning the event takes a substantial amount of staff time at City Hall, in addition to mayoral fundraising. The city argues that its money and its efforts should go toward the artists, and for back-to-basics things like picking up the trash afterwards, not toward opening up city-provided bars with alcohol-filled pineapples. Local bars should get patrons’ money, the city argues.

“I don’t want to get a narrative out there that this is somehow a smaller festival,” Joe Wilson Jr., the director of the city Department of Art, Culture, and Tourism, said in an interview last week. “We want to maximize our resources.”

Smiley himself, meanwhile, said people were still trying to understand what the changes would mean. He himself has an answer.

“It’s been a little bit of a mixed bag,” he said. “But I think it’s going to be great when all is said and done. People are going to love it.”

Brian Amaral can be reached at brian.amaral@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @bamaral44.