San Juan Bautista
– San Juan Bautista has ambitious plans for next year – the
mission city hopes to feature a different arts and cultural event
every weekend in 2007 and is looking for volunteers to help kick
off planning the festivities in earnest tomorrow.
San Juan Bautista – San Juan Bautista has ambitious plans for next year – the mission city hopes to feature a different arts and cultural event every weekend in 2007 and is looking for volunteers to help kick off planning the festivities in earnest tomorrow.
“We want San Juan to be known as a place to come and have fun in,” said City Manager Janice McClintock. “It’s a historical city, and it’s a place where you can enjoy your time, whether you’re in a group or as an individual.”
McClintock believes that keeping the calender packed will be a crucial part of the city’s attempt to promote San Juan Bautista as a tourist destination, particularly to day-trippers from the Bay Area and Monterey Peninsula.
“Every city has one or two generic craft or antique fairs,” she said. “But we’re hoping to offer some really unique events that will help bring in what I call Other People’s Money, or OPM.”
Some ideas for events next year include a tricycle/bicycle celebration, ethnic festivals celebrating the city’s diverse populations both past and present, a 50th Birthday Party for the Alfred Hitchcock film Vertigo – a portion of which was shot at Mission San Juan Bautista – a First Night San Benito County New Year’s Eve and even a San Juan Bautista Chicken festival, everyone’s favorite roaming fowl.
“If Calaveras County can have a festival for their frogs, then we can certainly do something with our chickens,” said Denise Cauthen-Wright, Executive Director of the San Juan Chamber of Commerce.
More tourist dollars in San Juan should bring more money to the rest of San Benito County as well, McClintock pointed out.
“What’s good for San Juan is good for San Benito County,” she said. “We don’t have many hotels, so some people will stay in Hollister hotels, they’ll eat in our restaurants and in Hollister, they might take a drive to the Pinnacles or the Wine Trail … We really have a lot to offer.”
Not everyone in San Juan is completely convinced that one party after another is necessarily the best move for the city, however. If such events cause the city’s main drag to be closed weekend after weekend, some local business owners fear they could stand to lose a lot of business.
“It just raises the question, ‘At what point are we not just San Juan?'” said Cauthen-Wright.
The idea of big monthly street fairs is made all the more complicated by a new city ordinance regarding public events that will be on the books and in effect by 2007, which regulates everything from the size of eating areas, to how many booths are allowed and how far apart they have to be from each other.
“It will be interesting to see what happens,” said Cauthen-Wright. “Whatever the city decides, it will take a lot of work and a lot of people … But whatever we do will have to benefit the majority of our business owners, not the minority, because they’re our mainstay.”
An informational meeting will be held tomorrow at 4pm at the San Juan Bautista City Hall. Anyone with an idea for an event or who is interested in volunteering is encouraged to attend.
