Atlanta Pride went from park to parking lot as Georgia’s drought forced the festival to move from its traditional home in Piedmont Park to the Civic Center. (Photo by Bo Shell)
Downpours do nothing to diminish drought Atlanta Pride still tallying, expects severe shortfall
The tale of the tape isn’t in on Atlanta Pride 2008, but organizers expect lower attendance and revenues for their first year at the Civic Center.
“We’re not going to have any accurate number. We don’t even have a best guess estimate,” Pride Executive Director Donna Narducci said. “We expect that it will be down because every situation we’ve been able to measure has been down from last year.”
Pride employees are still picking through boxes, receipts and equipment they put into storage before determining the final profit-loss statement. Narducci said they would have a much clearer picture of Pride’s finances by the end of the month. It costs approximately $750,000 to put on the annual event.
Of Pride’s two new fundraisers to offset the cost of moving from Piedmont Park to the Atlanta Civic Center, one was a huge financial drain while another exceeded all expectations.
Pride lost money on the Friday Night Divas show. A rough counting of the crowd showed 500 attendees watched Expose, CeCe Peniston, Frenchie Davis and Thelma Houston as doors were left open allowing people to come in and out, apparently without paying the average $25 ticket cost, during the show.
“Ticket sales were nowhere near where we need to be,” Narducci said. “It was supposed to be a fundraiser for Atlanta Pride, but it wasn’t anything near that.”
Pride’s first poker tournament was an unexpected success, raising $4,990.
“That was hugely successful and from an expense standpoint it was very cost effective as well,” Narducci said, adding they would likely expand the event in the future.
Pride’s future is certain, Narducci said, regardless of the final financial figures.
“What are the odds of having a Pride next year? There has to be a Pride, there is too much work that has to be done,” she said. “Where it will be? I don’t know. When it will be? I don’t know. What form it will be? I don’t know, but there will be a Pride.”
Atlanta’s Director of Parks Ken Gillett continues to watch the lake levels in Piedmont Park and wait for rain. He has few answers for festivals looking to return home.
“We are always willing to sit and talk, but what is always frustrating to us is we have nothing to talk about,” Gillett said. “There is still the drought, there is still the watering ban. We have no new information.”
STORMS BRING LITTLE RELIEF
Many of the questions about Pride will be answered when the City of Atlanta makes a decision about large festivals returning to city parks. The city booted all festivals with attendance larger than 50,000 people out of Piedmont Park in January. Both the Dogwood Festival and Atlanta Pride circulated petitions asking to return.
“We don’t know how many signatures we got,” Narducci said. “It got packed away with a lot of our other stuff and is in storage.”
Despite the hour of wind-whipped rain that soaked the Pride parade on July 6 and the nearly two inches that fell a Sunday later, Georgia is still under the conditions that caused city officials to evict large festivals from Piedmont Park.
David Stooksbury, the state’s climatologist, said Georgia would remain under a drought condition until an extended period of wetter than normal weather rains on the state.
“If we just have normal weather we can expect the soils to get drier. I can’t tell whether it will get wetter. I can’t tell if it will get drier, but I can tell you that if we get normal weather it will get drier,” Stooksbury said.
According to data collected at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, the city is actually better off than other parts of Georgia, reporting 80 percent of normal rainfall in the last 90 days and 79 percent of normal over the past year.
However, Stooksbury warned that the effects of the drought are cumulative. While the soaking rains of the past weeks have replenished topsoil, they have done little to dampen deep soil. The deep soil is what feeds trees and provides a steady stream of water into rivers and creeks.
Stooksbury, also an associate professor of Engineering & Atmospheric Science at the University of Georgia in Athens, has not studied the turf at Piedmont Park but said its hybrid Bermuda grass should weather the drought fairly well.
“Your Bermuda grasses have a tendency to be more resilient during the summer than your cool season grasses,” Stooksbury said. “Of course, part of the question has to do with the timing of the rain and the timing of traffic. In the spring and early summer you need to get a lot of growth though. If you did not get good growth early you would be concerned.”
Although the rain of the last few days may have made lawns and plants grow, it has done very little to change the conditions at Piedmont Park.
“Many of the plants that were visibly stressed are looking much better, however, we were basically only able to get moisture into the topsoil. The deep soil is still very dry,” Stooksbury said.
Unless more moisture soaks into the deep soil where trees dig their roots, the drought is going to reach a new stage.
“I do think we are going to see noticeable tree die off in Georgia, particularly in Atlanta,” Stooksbury said.
Gillett’s forestry division is the first line of response for removing trees in the city. He has already seen an increase in dead trees.
“I can’t say what’s causing it, but I can say we are seeing more dead and dying trees,” he said.
OTHER PARKS PICK UP EVENTS
Other outdoor venues are able to continue to host outdoor festivals despite increasing drought conditions. State-owned Centennial Park absorbed some of the events from Piedmont Park.
“We got asked to take on several events because of restrictions at other parks, and we had to make decisions about what we could take on and what we could not,” Nicole Rateau, Centennial Park’s public relations specialist, said. “I don’t think [the drought] has had an effect.”
While both parks use the same hybrid Bermuda grass, Centennial Park uses far more “hardscape,” such as concrete and bricks, than Piedmont Park. Although park officials refuse to release Centennial Park’s total capacity, Rateau said it holds less people than Piedmont Park, resulting in less wear on the turf.
The parks are laid out differently. While Centennial Park continues to host concerts, it does so at its amphitheater, which has very little grass surrounding it. There hasn’t been a concert on the grass since “On the Bricks” left the park for Stone Mountain and became “The Big Rock” a few years ago.
Stone Mountain is largely unaffected by drought concerns. Organizers canceled this year’s “Snow Mountain” held in the winter months, but continue to host summer nightly laser shows and events like the Scottish Highland Games. Kelley Swann, the park’s public relations specialist, said all of the water Stone Mountain uses comes from its lake, and is largely returned to the lake through the soil.
“We do irrigate, but it’s through the lake water. So that water goes right back into our lake, so we don’t use any city water,” she said.
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