Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Jam band fans aren’t the only people who enjoy the annual Wakarusa Music Festival.
Local restaurants, hotels and liquor store employees are ready for an expected increase in business this weekend thanks to the festival.
“We get a pretty big spike and just about double our normal weekend business,” said Derron McMorris, manager of Parkway Wine and Spirits, located at 23rd and Kasold Streets.
Because of its proximity to the four-day-long festival at Clinton Lake, McMorris said his store prepared for the coming slew of music lovers by scheduling additional workers and over-ordering some products, such as New Belgium and Pabst Blue Ribbon brand beers.
He said the store did even more business two years ago, before stricter regulations banned glass containers at the festival.
McMorris, who has worked at the liquor store for two years, said the all-day crowd at his store has never been a problem, smells aside.
“A lot of them are dirty and they haven’t showered because they’ve been out there for days at a time,” he said. “It never gets wild, just a little bit more people.”
Crowd control during the festival has been an issue in previous years at Hallmark Inn Best Value, 730 Iowa St.
“Last year, if it wasn’t nailed down they took it,” Jennifer Larsen, general manager of Hallmark Inn Best Value, said.
Larsen has worked at different Lawrence hotels for 10 years and was certain she would sell out of rooms this year.
The cost of a room for one night at the Hallmark Inn during the festival was $79.95, $20 more than any other weekend night. The reason for the price increase, she said, was to make up for the mess festival goers left behind them.
“They were a little bit messier,” Larsen said. “Yeah, we had quite a party at our pool last year.”
She said with the large number of visitors coming in, proximity to the festival did not affect hotel business.
“There aren’t that many hotel rooms for events like this here,” she said.
Location is the number one reason Everardo Cazares’s business gets a boost during the yearly festival.
“Normally it’s kind of steady,” said Cazares, general manager of Cici’s Pizza, 2020 W. 23rd St. “During those days we can see the increase in business and sales.”
The pizza restaurant, located four miles east of Clinton Lake, might appeal to festival attendees because it serves a full buffet for $4.29, Cazares said.
The restaurant will run with a full staff and extra food products during the weekend, he said.
On the other side of town, the Third Planet Imports, 846 Massachusetts St., will sell festival goers sunglasses, hackey-sacks, clothing and “other things they forgot,” said manager Melissa Padgett.
Third Planet will also be a vendor inside the festival and Padgett hopes negative publicity about security and crime crackdowns during last year’s festival won’t keep music fans from turning up in droves at this year’s festival.
Sarah Sims, a 2007 University graduate, is an employee at Sunrise Garden Center, 1501 Learnard Ave., which traded a variety of plants to be used in backstage and VIP areas at the festival in exchange for tickets into the festival.
Sims, a Lawrence native, said the majority of her money for the festival will be spent on beer. She said she will be staying overnights on Wakarusa campgrounds, but she said that many other festival goers will be coming into town to spend the evening.
“Usually a lot of them stay a couple days after the festival ends and you’ll see them around,” Sims said.
— Edited by Joe Caponio
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