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Rocky's singing the blues
Come on down! He wants more folks at festival
By Diane Urbani
Deseret News staff writer
Mayor Rocky Anderson took drastic measures Monday to address what he calls an "amazing" situation in Salt Lake City.
"Go ahead and try to drive downtown and find a parking place," he told a roomful of visitors from France, Japan, Poland and Utah. "Actually there are some parking lots that are only at about 50 percent of their capacity. A lot of our restaurants aren't doing their normal business because people are scared" by warnings about downtown traffic.
"This whole issue about traffic and parking and trying to discourage people from coming down — it's gotten to be just crazy. There's plenty of parking available."
And the city's downtown festival may be suffering from the same problem. Early Monday morning, the mayor heard a flock of children on the stairs outside his office. They were dancers from a local studio preparing to perform on the Washington Square stage — and their spangly leotards didn't look like they'd be much protection from the morning chill.
"I hope some people are out there to watch them," Anderson said. "They look like they're going to be so cold . . . at least their parents will be there."
The audience was small for the young dancers, and through Monday afternoon the stage, with its Olympic-blue arch and Peter Max backdrop, dwarfed the cluster of spectators.
"I'm the only one who'll walk across the fire for you," sang Out of the Blue's lead vocalist, covering a Melissa Etheridge song during the band's lunchtime concert on the square. "I'm the o-only o-ne."
That was an exaggeration, but not by much. Out of the Blue's sound was rich and passionate, but only a few dozen people sat listening in the folding chairs nearby.
Anderson grew more agitated as the day went on. "We've got amazing free entertainment at the City-County Building, every day and every night," he told just about everybody he ran into.
Olympic Square may have the millions of dollars, the medals, the huge corporate sponsors, but Washington Square has live music, dancers, cushioned ski-lift seats in front of the big-screen TV — "and everything is free," the mayor added. Then there's the Ethnic Village on 500 West just south of The Gateway, another "amazing" place the mayor wants Games-goers to see.
Anderson's guests, from Houston Mayor Lee Brown to Sarajevo Mayor Muhidin Hamamdzic, are recipients of the message: The Olympic Medals Plaza has been seeing the lion's share of action, sure, but people have to have tickets to get in, and most of those are gone — unlike Washington Square and the Ethnic Village.
And this is the place — the block around the City-County Building, decked out with heated tents, plastic ground cover and swanky portable rest rooms — to find Utah musicians, be they Peruvian, Indian, Irish or classic rock.
Between courtesy visits with such dignitaries, Anderson seizes his computer mouse, bent on finding the city Web site's listing of Washington Square performers scheduled now through Feb. 24. The timetable doesn't readily appear. Anderson grabs the phone and speed-dials Josh Ewing, his communications director.
"Josh, give me a call," he barks. "We need to get that schedule out there, big as life . . . I don't care if they take all of my speeches off" the Web site. The mayor's "State of the City" speech and others are on the site's home page.
Anderson click, click, click, click, clicks and finally finds the Washington Square entertainment lineup. "You have to really dig," acknowledges his assistant, Christy Cordwell, who's now looking over his shoulder and helping out with the mouse-clicking.
"And we're wondering why nobody's here. Would you have Josh call me right away?" Anderson repeats.
He reads e-mails, returns phone calls and signs letters, and Cordwell comes back in. "I talked to Josh about the Web site," she says in a soothing voice, adding that the Washington Square timetable will be up front very soon.
And it is — the whole 10:30 a.m.-1 a.m. schedule of free entertainment, at www.slcgov.com, replete with a live Webcam, via links on the right side of the city's home page. Wednesday's main-stage acts include the Kolo Bosnian folk dancers at 11:15 a.m., Georgia Barretto's Brazilian jazz group at 2:15 p.m., Polynesian fire dancing at 5:15 p.m. and two classic rock and R & B bands, Mud Puddle and Outrageous, playing from 10:15 p.m. till after midnight.
Free shuttle buses run to downtown from numerous park-and-ride lots; TRAX also serves the city center with stations at the Gallivan Utah Center and at the Main Library, which is next door to the square.
Anderson is typically a frequent touter of transit. But reports of empty restaurants and a sparsely visited Ethnic Village have changed his tune. "I'd rather have a little crowding downtown and have people supporting our local businesses," he said. And the mayor, after all, has been doing the town in his Suburban.
E-mail: durbani@desnews.com
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February 13, 2002
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