So as summer winds down, so do the events of the season, and a big series of them we learned today may have a harder time getting those going next year. Open Streets is something the city of Minneapolis has had for more than a decade. It’s a street takeover and a busy urban
Area for an afternoon where you could walk, roller skate, skateboard, eat C art, see music, and enjoy the city on a busy St. in a vehicle freeway. Well, word came this morning that the city is ending its partnership with Open Streets for all those parties as the contract. They both had since 2011.
For $0.00 is over. It is a $0.00 contract that will come to an end in October. And really the main difference then is that in 2024, instead of the city having a contract with an organizer to do a series of open streets events, that opportunity will exist for organizers to propose one or
More events themselves. So it could be more than one organizer that comes forward and says we would like to host an open streets event and this is what it would look like and so instead of just. Having a single organizer that’s delivering a whole series, it kind of opens the opportunity up.
Right, but the organization that’s been putting it on for 10 years once a fair shake too, the city says Sure, those events could keep happening with the original group putting them on or another group who wants to do it. But it doesn’t say this. Out of nowhere, Open Streets went to
The city in August with an e-mail with a budget request of about a hundred $850,000 to put on next year’s 5 events. The city never met with our streets To say yes or no to that news just came today that the contract was ending and wasn’t being renewed.
Which to Open Streets organization meant? Sure, you could have it, but not exclusively and not with any money. Unfunded. You could say that Open Streets still gets to exist, but the how is what matters and the where is is what matters. We have an entire Rainbow community here in the city of Minneapolis.
They should all be showcased and they should all be represented and they should all be celebrated. We shouldn’t just have nice things for wealthy people in the wealthy areas. So does that mean Open Streets is over? We’ll see. The city has plans for a new series of events it’s going
To announce Thursday afternoon. Our Streets, which runs Open Streets, wants the city to reconsider its relationship with the successful programming they’ve put on for over a decade.
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