Saturday night block party to return in fall

There was a meeting yesterday afternoon at Cita's on Commodore Plaza, to discuss the continuation of the Saturday block parties. All restaurant owners on the block met with David Collins and Richard Issa from the BID.

Some officials from the post office attented the meeting too, including Postmaster David Boardman. The post office is working on having the MPA run the post office parking lot at night, to allow paid parking, like in the past.

Plans for the block party are to bring it back Saturday, September 12 and have it run each Saturday for 25 weeks. It may even happen a week earlier, if the Bed Race Committee gets their way. This way it could all be one large Labor Day weekend which would include the Bed Race and the Block Party the night before, along with the Pajama Pub Crawl. Bed Race Committee members have been lobbying the BID to change the date to a week earlier, I know this because I was one of the people lobbying them.

The restaurant owners agreed to chip in $350.00 each per week to help with the costs. It gets pretty pricey to close the streets, get licenses, pay bands, etc.

Expenses will be kept lower by doing away with a few things like extra off duty police officers. The crowds have been great and our local beat cops should be able to handle anything that comes up, along with the Kent Security guards from the black booths on either end.

Also, large bands will fluctuate with smaller acts from week to week, which will save money.

One major cost which also is very time consuming is the process of getting the extended liquor licenses, which allow the restaurants to sell liquor on the street ($100 a week per restaurant). Each week, someone would have to fill out forms and take them in person to the office in Doral, which processes them. It is a State of Florida law and the city has no say around this currently, but hopefully, this can be rectified and not have to be a weekly chore and expense.

Logistics are being worked out, but the fact is that the Commodore Plaza Block Party will return in the fall. It was a great success the past five weeks and everyone is looking forward to its return.