The Sunnyvale Sun

News

Events aim to attract a crowd

By JASON GOLDMAN-HALL

Sunnyvale has always attracted visitors, patrons and residents with its high-tech facilities, but now the city is working to attract large-scale crowds with high-profile community events to boost city revenues and pride.

But because the city's budget has been trimmed down to the bone in the past few years, the money to support large-scale events such as marathons, races or large festivals is unavailable.

To counter this, and to bring the community together in other ways, the Sunnyvale City Council is now looking to streamline the event planning process and find business partners to sponsor events that benefit all of Sunnyvale.

"We're not going to start that kind of event, but if the community wants to do it, we'll look into it," Neighborhood and Community Services manager Coryn Campbell said.

To promote events at no cost to the city, the council elected to encourage private sponsorship for city and non-city events and encourage the city to work with neighborhood associations and other groups to manage events. It also set out to clarify the application process to make it easier to plan events.

There are already a number of community events that the city takes part in but does not officially sponsor, such as the Chamber of Commerce's Art & Wine Festival, the Lakewood Village holiday parade and the Music & Market summer concert series downtown.

"Without those events, I really think there would be a hole in the Sunnyvale community," Campbell said.

But because of limited funding, there are only five events the city puts on each year: the Health and Safety Fair, Hands on the Arts, National Night Out and the joint Fourth of July and State of the City event.

"We're not just looking at huge events, but any event that brings a sense of community," Campbell said. "Sunnyvale has been exploring how to do more events for a long time, and I think this is a good step."

There were also two new events in Sunnyvale in 2005 that were put on by outside groups but brought visitors and revenue dollars to Sunnyvale.

The Children's Kite Flying Competition--sponsored by San Jose's World Journal--in October brought approximately 1,500 to 2,000 people to Sunnyvale. Also helping, but to a lesser extent, was the Mountain Dew Free Flow Tour Skateboarding competition's June stop at the Sunnyvale Skate Park that brought 150 people to watch.

"There's nothing wrong with skateboard events, but we're looking at events with a much broader appeal," communications officer John Pilger said.

He added that the skateboarding tour already has applications in to return this year.

Such events also help Sunnyvale compete with neighboring cities for visitors. Events such as Palo Alto's Black and White Ball or San Jose's Grand Prix are sponsored by outside groups but still bring money to local services and agencies.

"We're not interested in doing anything as grandiose, but we have been trying for some time to get our own destination events," Pilger said.