Association to survey business owners about nixing event in
downtown next year
Morgan Hill – If the dateline said “New Orleans,” it’d be a different story. But as it stands, some downtown business owners are saying there’s too much drinking, rowdiness and trash – in other words, too much “Mardi Gras” – in Morgan Hill’s yearly Mushroom Mardi Gras festival.
Rosy’s at the Beach co-owner Rosy Bergin is one unhappy merchant making noise over the festival’s drawbacks. After all, she said Mushroom Mardi Gras for her last weekend meant dealing with drunken men urinating in her restaurant’s back patio and “unsavory” inebriated crowds yelling, swearing, blowing whistles and otherwise disrupting the smooth operation of her business. By Sunday night, her staff was so overburdened by hordes of “buzzed” customers that she did something she has never done before – she closed her doors two hours early.
“Let me put it this way – it wouldn’t make me unhappy if the festival didn’t come back,” she said.
Responding to a rash of similar concerns over last week’s block party and crafts fair that drew thousands of people to Monterey Road, the Morgan Hill Downtown Association wants to conduct a formal written survey to assess downtown merchants’ feelings on having the widely appealing festival on the city’s main drag. The survey could influence whether the 27-year-old event returns next year.
“We want to give everyone an equal opportunity to respond” by having a written survey, said Morgan Hill Downtown Association Executive Director Dan Craig. Otherwise, he’d only hear from an “isolated few” who usually are the most the most outspoken on downtown issues affecting their livelihoods.
Bergin said she’s not opposed to having downtown street parties. She’s a big fan of The Taste of Morgan Hill festival held downtown by the Chamber of Commerce in September, an event she characterizes as smaller, mellower and more focussed in its mission. “The Taste of Morgan Hill is a reflection of local businesses, and the community,” she said. “Mushroom Mardi Gras – I don’t know what it is.”
Ofelia McCain, who runs long-standing Sinaloa Cafe Restaurant with her mom and her brother, thinks Mushroom Mardi Gras is suffering an identity crisis after years of being a music festival in Community Park. She said the attendance was a mixed bag of families with children, peaceful shoppers and a ton of people who just wanted to party.
“It definitely brings a rougher crowd (than The Taste of Morgan Hill),” she said. “They don’t have respect for my property, my employees.”
McCain said she hired two private security officers last weekend to patrol her restaurant. “If I consider being open next year, I’ll have to double that,” she said.
Having a bar in her restaurant didn’t make things easier for her. “Normally, they’re not ‘polluted’ when they’re walking in,” she said. “And beer and alcohol don’t mix well. They can be drinking beer all day long, have one margarita, and become a whole different animal.”
South Valley Bikes owner Mark Silva said the festival hindered his business. But unlike the restaurants, his problem weren’t drunken hordes, but lack of sales. He estimates he lost two-thirds of his potential business on Saturday and about one-half on Sunday.
“A lot of people came for one thing – to drink in the street,” he said. “They’re festival-goers – they’re not your return downtown foot traffic.”
Turning a positive ear to these concerns, Mushroom Mardi Gras Board of Directors President Dan Sullivan said he welcomes any feedback from merchants on this year’s event. The point of the festival is to have a safe and fun celebration for the community while raising funds for scholarships and providing a venue for other non-profits to raise money, Sullivan said.
“We don’t want to hurt downtown,” said Sullivan, who has volunteered for the nonprofit Mushroom Mardi Gras organization for seven years. “We want to work with businesses. We want to get it right. And if downtown doesn’t want the festival, we won’t have it here.”
But finding a new location for the homegrown party could be impossible by next year. Mushroom Mardi Gras effectively lost its long-running spot at Community Park two years ago when construction began on the new Centennial Recreation Center. Prior to that, the festival had been held at the now-defunct Flying Lady on Foothill Boulevard, where Fry’s Golf Course lies today.
Sullivan said he’d understand if the concerns of downtown merchants led to a hiatus of the festival if a new location could not be found. Morgan Hill has grown so much, he said, alluding to how the city’s population has just about doubled in the last 27 years, and how so much of the old open lands have vanished. He understands how moving the festival from wide-open lands to the downtown corridor represents a departure from the past. In light of the current unresolved controversies, he knows Mushroom Mardi Gras’ “day in the sun” might be fading.
Still, it’s too early to tell what may happen to the party.
Craig – the Downtown Association’s director – said the relationship between the association and Mardi Gras organizers is not adversarial. In fact, he and Sullivan met on good terms Wednesday morning to walk up and down Monterey Road to see if more clean-up efforts were needed. Craig found only a few trouble spots, where dropped food had apparently been mashed into the sidewalk. Sullivan agreed to return later that day with his power-washer to clean it up. Similarly, on Tuesday, in an effort to leave downtown as clean as they found it, festival organizers spent an extra $300 on day laborers to sweep up trash that was still blowing around in the wind following last weekend’s colorful to-do.
Tony Burchyns covers Morgan Hill for The Times. Reach him at (408) 779-4106 or tb*******@mo*************.com.
