Radford Community Fest

The host of the One More Round Podcast discusses a new event called the Radford Community Fest and raises concerns about its impact on the city. The event is planned for August 24th and will feature live music, entertainment, vendors, food trucks, a kids' zone, and a beer garden. The host questions the family-friendliness of the event and the involvement of Radford University, expressing concerns about the city's previous experiences with university-related events. The host also questions the use of the term "beer garden" and expresses personal reservations about events that serve alcohol. Overall, the host is in favor of community events but has reservations about this particular one. Welcome to One More Round Podcast, where we're working hard to make Radford great again. Now let's get in the ring. Hey, welcome to One More Round Podcast. I'm your host, as always, Keith Marshall. Welcome to the ring. Today, we don't have a really long podcast, or at least that's my prediction in the first few seconds of the podcast. I think I'm gonna be able to hit my points fairly quickly, and this is a developing subject for me. It's something that I got a phone call from a local business owner that asked me to look into this a little bit, and I drew from some of their questions and some of their concerns about a particular event that the city has planned, how it might affect their business and how it might affect other businesses within the city. Well, as you know, I'm all about Radford, and I'm all about, as I said at the beginning, making Radford great again, because we're certainly teetering on the brink of a disaster right now under our present leadership, but I wanted to take a look at this event and see if it's really something that's good for the city, and that is the Radford Community Fest. It's a new event that's planned for August the 24th. It's 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. It's down in East End. It's supposed to stretch from 3rd Avenue, I assume as it intersects Tyler, and completely all of Tyler, all the way up to Tyler. Excuse me, all of East Main Street, all the way up to Tyler, and it's going to shut down that whole section of roadway. There's gonna be, it's gonna be foot traffic only. You're not gonna be able to drive downtown during that time, and as I understand it, as it's been explained to me, it's timed and it's done to coincide with the annual Radford University move-in on campus. Students will be moving in there. That's August 24th, and they're trying to capture those students and parents in a big event on campus. Now, from the outset, as I read the flyer, and this flyer, by the way, has been put out by the city. This local business owner let me know about this, and I checked it out. I read it. They sent it to me, but I also went on to the city's page and made sure everything was the same, and I read what the flyer said, and as I read the flyer, and as I kinda read in between the lines, which I think a lot of us fail to do when we're just quickly looking at something on Facebook, as I read between the lines, I drew some concerns from that. It seems to fit a pattern that I've been seeing going on now for about five or six years. Anytime Radford City and Radford University are involved in something, there seems to be a way things generally go in a direction that things go that concerns me, and I've been speaking out against that, and many of you have too. Now, I wanna say from the outset, I'm actually very much in favor of events like this. I think they're good for the community. I think they're fun to go to sometimes. I'm often disappointed because I don't believe some of the events that are being planned are family events, and everything that I look at, I generally look under the context of family. If it doesn't feel really family-friendly to me, or if it's something, or there's something that I would worry, and I don't have young kids anymore. I still have trouble not thinking of myself as having young kids. I'm just kinda, I've turned myself into a dad through and through, and I think that way. I think like a father. I think like a dad. Now, I'm a granddad, and I have little bitty grandchildren running around, so I'm still in that mode. I'm not their daddy, and their parents take good care of them. They don't need me, really, but I feel like I wanna be needed, and I like to be involved, and I just love and cherish them, so I always think of things in the context of family, and maybe you're in a different stage of life or whatever, and you don't look at things exactly that way. I just wanna explain to you the context and the kind of mode of thinking that I come through when I approach that. So I went and I took a look at this flyer on the city webpage, and like I said, I wanna finish my thought. I didn't finish it. I do like events like this. I think they can be beneficial if done properly. They can be beneficial for the city, for its residents. It can be very beneficial for our businesses to promote the city. I think those things are good things. We see some of those events around in the area. We see them in Blacksburg and Christiansburg. Actually, Blacksburg, kind of the most famous, they have an event called Stepping Out, and I know some people in Blacksburg, and I have actually looked into that a little bit and kind of found out a little more about how it originated and how it started and kind of the way that they began their event and how it was tailored, and I wanna talk about that a little today as we go on in the episode. But let me start, I think, by reading a little bit of this flyer that come out, like I said, on the city's webpage and it's being shared in the community. Okay, at the risk of being redundant, I'll just read the first paragraph of this flyer here. It just says that the inaugural Radford Community Fest will take place August 24th, 2024, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., and remember those times, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. This street festival will take place on Main Street between Tyler Avenue and 3rd Avenue, we mentioned that. It goes on to say, students, families, community members, and visitors are invited to join us for a day of live music, entertainment, vendors, food trucks, a kids' zone play area, and a beer garden. Traffic will be redirected during the time. Radford Community Fest is free to attend. Food, drinks, and crafts are available for purchase. Now, I do have a question. This is just a general question, it's a dumb question, but I always, you know, I know the answer, but I'm always curious. Some things I think are funny, how people word things, how people put things. Why do they call it a beer garden? I mean, are we gonna be serving alcohol among flowers and maybe between tomato plants and carrots and potatoes? I don't know. It's a god. Why do we call it a beer garden? Does it sound, I guess it sounds better than beer concrete area or roped-off area near the grass. So we call it a beer garden. I don't know. Sorry, it's just something that just jumps out at me. And I'm a tea toter. I don't drink, smoke, I don't do anything. I'm as boring as they get. And I'm not looking down my Christian nose at anybody. Don't get the wrong impression. I stay away from that stuff, and I generally don't mess with events that have it. That's my personal conviction. It doesn't have to be yours. I'm just trying to make a point. I don't understand the whole beer garden thing. It's just, I don't know, just one of them pet peeves. I thought about adding to my podcast one every week things that drive me nuts, just little things. And I think about them. I should write them down. They might drive you nuts too. Yours are probably different than mine. But that's one of them, beer garden. We got a beer garden. I just don't get it. Anyway, so they got their beer garden and they have their drinks and they have their beer garden. And they have their, you know, bands and music. And, you know, I think when you first look at something like this, my general impression when I first read it, you know, is, you know, it doesn't sound like a bad event. I mean, we bring people into the city. This is what it's for, it's to help our businesses. It's to do things like that. And generally I look at that as a positive thing. I have supported myself these types of events in the past, you know, community events like, you know, like this, you know, for families and things like that. I like those things. But I've dug a little deeper on this and just paid a little more attention to the details about this particular event. And there's a few things and also some, you know, with some interjection from, like I said, local businesses there that reached out to me. There's a few things that bother me about this event. And it doesn't feel to me so family friendly and definitely not business friendly for the businesses of the city of Rafford. There's something in this that really bothers me. When you look at it a little deeper, more than just the flyer, and you click on the actual event itself, you know, you go down there and you actually hit the event itself. It pops up and, you know, it says that it's public, but it says event by Rafford University Student Involvement and two others. And, you know, I looked at that and I looked at student involvement. And when you look that up and you look up what exactly, you know, the valid information for that, and I'm not disparaging this group, I'm just saying there's a little more to it than that. It says this is the home of clubs and organizations, student media, our space, campus recreation, intramural sports, Greek life, Rafford After Dark, RU Outdoors, LEED Scholarship, SOAR, Club Fair, Bonnie Days, and much more. It's a university sponsored or university affiliated group. And it started to concern me a little bit that anytime I see Rafford University and Rafford City anymore, I didn't used to feel this way, but anytime I see it now, my antennas go up. I'll start saying, how are we gonna get rooked in this deal? What's gonna happen here? How's the city gonna come out on the bad end of this? Because I've just learned recently that that's kind of the way things are. It seems to happen all the time. It shouldn't happen. It doesn't have to happen. We certainly could work together for an event like this. Maybe we are. And maybe this podcast is just kind of a shot over the bow or just a fact-finding mission, maybe. I may be all wrong on some of these things, but when I saw that and I looked at it, I had some concerns. And then I dug a little deeper and I had to think to myself, if Rafford University wanted to do something like this, I mean, it's obviously tailored for move-in day. It's obviously tailored for parents and students that are coming into the city. And I looked in, I told you that I checked on how Blacksburg started their event. And when they started theirs, they began with a certain premise, the way I understood it. And that premise was we're going to introduce these parents and these students to our local businesses. That's our goal. We want them to know what's downtown and where they can go and where they can shop. We want to help them help us. So you think maybe that would be what we're doing here. But then I found out that, you know, our local businesses were not even contacted about this beforehand. They were not part, as I understand it, they were not part in any kind of discussions or any kind of work to bring this about, not in any large scale that should be. And they really weren't asked for their buy-in into this. It was just kind of like, oh, here's what we're doing. Get involved if you want to. That's not good economic development, in my opinion. That's not a good way to promote businesses within the city. It actually, the way this event seems to be tailored, it actually could potentially hurt the businesses of Radford. And I know that's not the purpose of it. But to me, the tone deafness of the approach to this and the launch of it working out some of these details is problematic to me. Now, what do I mean by that? Well, consider this, consider this. If you own a business downtown, now they've already said in this event, they're bringing in craft vendors, they're bringing in food trucks, they're allowing people to come from out of town to set up booths, to sell their wares to students and family and, oh, by the way, local community people, if you want to come to. They're setting it up for that. And there's nothing wrong with that in general. But if you're a business downtown, isn't it extremely possible they may be selling something that you're selling in your storefront as well? And one little problem with that, now you could say, well, they could come to your shop too. And they could, they could. But I got a feeling things are gonna be directed towards the stage and towards the music and away from some of those businesses. But if you're a local business downtown and you're open on Saturday and your access is closed, you have cut off your loyal customers from other parts of the city or from other towns or wherever they come from to get your product. You've also introduced, maybe you're one of the restaurants that sit right in that corridor. You've also introduced food vendors who are going to be there both during the lunchtime hour and the dinnertime hour that you're gonna have to compete against on a Saturday, a summer Saturday in your own hometown. Now, that's just for the vendors and the businesses that are there on Main Street. But let's look at it a little broader. Because I really think when you develop these plans and you do these things, if you're a representative of the city, I mean, kind of the first thing you say to yourself, shouldn't it be do no harm? Do no harm to my citizens or residents first. My goal is to represent them and to grow them and to benefit them. RU is not my responsibility. I'm not here for RU, I'm here for the taxpayers. That's number one. Doesn't mean you can't be good friends or work together. You need to be here for the taxpayers. And I'm just a little worried that this wasn't thought out well. And it has somebody's sticky fingers on it. The way it's tailored, the fact that, and I gotta wonder, and by the way, the others, I said that that was under the Facebook post, it was the Radford University student involvement and two others. When you look at the two others, the two others are Radford University and Radford City Government. But I have to wonder, I have to ask myself, who's running this show? It's our city streets. It's affecting our businesses. We're shutting down our roadways. Who's in charge? Is the city in charge? Because they should be, it's our streets. So we should think of ourselves first. Or is Radford University in charge? And I promise you, they're probably gonna think of their students and themselves first. Seems the way the world is, right? We get our own. And it's not always right, but sometimes you gotta protect yourself for sure. And the city officials have to do that on behalf of our businesses. So at this point, I think I have to come to the conclusion that this is really not a community event. They may want it to be, but it has not been planned that way or structured that way. It's not family-friendly. Yeah, people think different than me, okay? I've mentioned that before. You know, I'm a dad, I think like a dad. People are different than me, but if I look at this combination and I think live music, college students, beer, God, and I don't think kids play area, I don't see those in the same sentence. I don't see those together. I don't feel completely comfortable taking my young impressionable child down to something like that. Now, the majority of people are gonna act a thousand percent responsible, okay? I get that. It just seems to me just my own personal conviction and feeling a bad situation to bring my kids into, my grandkids into. I wouldn't do that. It doesn't feel family-friendly. I do not feel like it's an event that I can go to, but I am affected by it because if I wanna go down to the Mexican restaurant downtown, I'm not gonna be able to go. I can't get there. I'm gonna have trouble, you know, maybe getting something else done downtown that I wanna do. I don't wanna draw businesses in there and mention their names and tie them to me and cause them trouble. But you get my point. You've made a decision with my property, with my taxpayer-funded property, like we all pay, and you've really, in my opinion, not done this event directly and for the purpose of helping our city. You know, and I have to ask, what is this costing us? We obviously are going to have to direct personnel to close the streets, to watch. We're gonna have to have extra police on duty, probably. We're going to have to have Public Works get involved with signages and street blocking and then taking it all up when it's over. It's going to cost the city of Radford money, and we all know how wealthy we are. We're just rolling with money, right? Yeah, obviously I'm being sarcastic. We're not, we're broke. How much of this are we funding versus Radford University? Is it being fairly done? And you have to ask yourself, if you're gonna do an event and you're gonna tailor it towards Radford University, which is fine, they can do events, nothing wrong with that. Why is it not being done on campus then, though? Why are we blocking our streets to do it? Now, as I said, I wouldn't necessarily be against this if we were involving our businesses. I wanna give you an example, something that I've learned from this, something that happened in Radford a number of years back that really hurt some local businesses. And it's something that I don't think the city officials understood or anybody really thought about. It's just a small thing, but it gives you an example of how you can affect a business with a bad decision or how by leaving them out or by not talking and communicating with them, as an elected official or whoever you are that's planning this process, how you can hurt businesses within your community. You know, Radford University used to have a rule and the freshmen had to live on campus. Freshmen had to live on campus. Now, when the freshmen, you know, when they moved to the next level, when they moved to a sophomore, their sophomore year, a large portion of them would move off campus. They would find some sort of off-campus housing, an apartment, a room in one of the houses, whatever it was. And now your juniors and seniors were already off campus. They'd went through their sophomore year, they were already off campus somewhere. And of course, your freshmen have to be on campus. But when them rising sophomores, when they come in for this day, for this particular day, when they came in for move-in day, they would make some pretty good purchases at our local furniture stores. And guess what they had to buy? They had to buy mattresses for the beds. You know, a lot of times there'd be a bed there, but they didn't have a mattress in it. Or you just had a bunk or whatever it was. They would buy their own mattresses and sometimes pillows and other things like that. They would buy that, you know, on move-in day. And it was a huge sale item for, you know, a couple of local businesses there. Well, RU made a decision to move the sophomores on campus one year. From now on, that particular year, you're not going to be moving out to another location. So that meant for that particular move-in day, there were no students who are not already off campus. You know, the majority of, like I said, juniors and seniors were already off campus. The freshmen, they had to be on campus. And the sophomores were going to have to stay on campus. And the university itself, as I understood it, had went out and got their own mattresses. They got some huge deal from, you know, some conglomerate somewhere, I guess. So no one went to those businesses and bought mattresses on that special day. Well, they had bought, you know, hundreds and maybe just truckloads of mattresses thinking they had those sales, but nobody communicated with them. Nobody thought to tell them. Maybe they weren't paying attention. Maybe it should have been, I don't know. But that's where we help our businesses when we communicate with them, when we look out for them. But they were stuck with tens of thousands of dollars worth of inventory that they lost because of that. They didn't sell them. You know, there's not a huge market out there, besides college students, for what do they call them? Single mattresses, twins, whatever they call them, little mattresses for one person. So they got hammered. And you know, the same kind of thing could potentially happen on move-in day. You know, there's some special days that the university has that really helps our local businesses. You know, like graduation day, family weekend, things like that. It really provides a boost to our local restaurants in particular, our gas stations, other things. You know, local stores where they can shop. And move-in day is no different. And we're already losing because our businesses have already lost so much because of the dwindling numbers at Radford University. I mean, they're close, you know, like half of what they used to be. They're less than half of what they used to be. They've had a little uptick, I heard, coming up, which is a good thing for our city, but it's still just grossly below what it used to be. So that hurts them already. But there also are businesses that are not affected by the closed down road. They are still affected because they're not gonna get a lot of that traffic to their restaurants and their businesses because they're going to be buying their supper and their lunch downtown from a food vendor who's come in from another area. So we have the potential to hurt our businesses all across town. That's something we have to weigh. And you know, you can't be perfect with everything. I mean, like I said, I support events like that. And there's no way that you can do any kind of event and not affect someone somehow. There's no perfect scenarios to do anything. Sometimes you get the scale out and you weigh the good and the bad. But in this particular case, it looks to me like we've not got that scale out. Are you requesting an event and maybe we're desperate to do some things with them to prove to them we're loyal? I don't know. But we jumped on the bandwagon with that without a whole lot of thought. And I just believe we need to reconsider how we're doing that. And at the very least, reconsider how we do it in the future. We have to be about helping and supporting our local businesses. You know, our local businesses are people and family that live within our city. If they're not doing well, they themselves, their families are not doing well, they're not hiring people to work in their establishments, we're not bringing in the revenue for sales tax and meals tax or whatever it is. So we have to think that out. That's why, you know, I had a lot of concerns about the hotel when we're cutting special deals for them, knowing that, you know, there's a possibility at some point they're gonna ditch us and leave and pull off a tax roll. And we got other motels in the city that are not getting those benefits and we could be hurting them. You're kind of subsidizing one while another is competing against it. So you have to think about those things. I think it's important. It's important to me. Now, I don't wanna just, I've went after Rafford University hard and given my opinions on some of the things they're doing. And I don't back away from that one inch. And I'm not actually doing this to go after Rafford University, I'm not. I think they're probably trying to do some events together with the city. And I think that's good. But we, I've mentioned this before. When we sit across from each other at the table, we need to be equal partners. And someone for the city has to be looking out for us. They gotta ask those tough questions and get those answers. And maybe they have them. Maybe in this flyer, it's just a flyer and we don't have all the details. Maybe the information that I've been told by local businesses is not true. Maybe they're mistaken. And we can clear this up quick. Or maybe we need to look at a few things to fix this. So we don't, we can, before it happens, it's August. And so, you know, there's three points that I'm gonna just say quickly. I'm not gonna belabor them. Number one, we gotta be honest about what we're doing. What is the purpose of the event? Okay, let's decide, let's not just put an event out and say it's for this. Let's be honest about what we're doing here. Are we doing something to promote Radford University to help them, something that they want? Or are we doing something to help us both? Are we wanting to promote the city of Radford to the students and our businesses? Are we wanting to do that and help Radford University? Or is this just about our youth? Are we really tailoring this event to be family-friendly that anyone can come to? We're putting a kid's play zone. Is that a good idea with everything we're mixing? Let's just be honest about what we're doing. Number two, I say, let's get some community involvement in particular, let's get business buy-in to this thing. Let's not talk to them after the fact. Let's talk to them as we're developing the concept of what we're going to do. Bring them to the table in mass and talk to them about how we can help this event, how we can make sure this event helps them and grows their business and protects their interests. And let's not create, number three, let's not create events that go directly against Radford City's bottom line. Now, I'm not sure that this does. It remains to be seen, but let's make sure that it doesn't. Let's get that scale out and let's weigh the good and the bad. We have to learn that there's kind of a cancer within the city that is pro-RU above the city. We know that. You know, I don't back away from that at all. I believe it with all my heart. Go listen to Red River Black 1, 2, and 3. You'll find out what's going on. So we know that's going on. So everybody around that problem has to be looking out for the city because, you know, some are not going to. We have to be looking out for the city. Looking out for the city is not putting up Facebook posts about how great this is and how great that is. And then when everybody's not looking, you know, slipping the knife in the back. That's not helping the city. We need to have other responsible people within our city government putting a foot down saying, no, no, Radford first. Radford comes first. Our citizens, our businesses, our families, our kids. Radford City comes first. That's important. Okay, I told you this wasn't going to be a long episode and it's not. Some of you like the short ones that you can listen to real fast. This is more of, like I said, it's a fact-finding podcast. Kind of a shot over the bow, just trying to figure out what's going on and make sure, you know, as we look at these events, as we do these things, that we're being wise about it. And if you're having trouble, if you're in city government and you're having trouble figuring out what's the best thing to do on these businesses, hey, throw away the pride. I know I have to all the time. Get someone smarter than you to come in and help you. Your local businesses have been successful for a reason. They're good at what they do and they know how to run a business and they know what's good for themselves and they probably can interject on some things that are good for the city. And I hope this event turns out well. I hope it does great. I hope it brings in people and I hope they spend money in the city and I hope our businesses do well and that's my goal. That's my overall goal, what's best for the city of Radford and I'm gonna do what I can to promote good things for the city. All right, I wanna say I appreciate you joining me today here on OMR. I love having you in the ring with me here. I wanna finish, as I always do, with my theme verse and that's found, as always, in Ecclesiastes chapter 12, verses 13 and 14. And God's word says this, let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. Fear God and keep his commandments for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil. Hey, thanks again for joining me. I hope you and your family have a wonderful weekend. I hope God blesses you richly in all things and hey, I look forward to talking to you again here on One More Round Podcast. Thanks. Bye.