After 35 years, Burlington’s annual New Year’s Eve festival will not return next year. The First Night Burlington board of directors announced Tuesday that the event would be discontinued because of low attendance and the loss of a key sponsor.
The frigid temperatures during the most recent festival kept people at home, leading to a “substantial loss” for the organization, board chair Dave Mount explained in a press release. “Our reserves have been fully tapped,” he wrote.
The board will pay off any outstanding debts from the 2018 event before disbanding First Night Burlington, Inc., at the end of April, according to the release.
First Night brought musicians, actors, parades and events to downtown Burlington since the inaugural event in 1983. The stroke of midnight was marked with a fireworks display. Mount said in an interview that he attended the first festival 35 years ago and brought his grandchildren in recent years to see Circus Smirkus perform. “Watching their faces light up with the magic of the circus — I’m going to miss it,” he said.
Attendance had been dropping for some time, Mount added, but this year’s cold temperatures, and a New Year’s Eve that fell midweek, dealt the organization a heavy financial blow. In addition, NorthCountry Federal Credit Union, the event’s principal sponsor for the past 10 years, announced that it would “substantially reduce” its participation in the future, “leaving First Night without a major source of sponsorship income,” according to the release.
Mount raised the possibility of closure at a board meeting two weeks ago, he said. Board members at first were “incredulous,” but in the end, they saw the writing on the wall. “I didn’t see any alternative,” he said. “None of us wanted to be on the board to shut it down.”
Burlington City Arts will explore whether it can run an alternative to First Night, Mount said. Any remaining First Night assets will be donated to the organization.
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I am sorry to see the event go. Not just because of the loss of family friendly entertainment, but also because this means no more New Year’s Eve meals in the basement of the Baptist Church. I mean, My God; Leunig’s has nothing on the Baptists for purely decadent dining.
Oh, also — without the annual First Night rites, what’s gonna keep Shub-Niggurath or Nyarlathotep from eating all our souls?
I am sad to see First Night go but not surprised. For something to remain popular in an area with a limited population the content needs to change from year to year. I I am my thirties and grew up in Burlington. The same act are booked now as were booked when I was five years old. Why did they never think to bring in new shows?
It’s a shame to see First Night end. But it is not surprising. I would look at the roster of performers each year and realize that some were very good, some were OK, and the rest was Hamburger Helper. And some of these lesser acts would repeat for years. I recall one white guy with a shaved head and acoustic guitar whose songs were described as “healing and medicinal” who did little more than moan, whimper and whine into the mic for 30 minutes which sent most of the crowd out the door before he finished. The only medicine I thought of was Pepto-Bismol.
The weather can’t be blamed for much of the collapse of First Night. There should be consideration of just who was doing the picking as far as entertainment and why evidently most folks lost interest in coming. Perhaps a more consolidated schedule and fewer but better acts might have saved First Night, say running from 3pm to 9pm, a more family friendly time slot instead of trying to party into the night.
Or maybe as Burlington becomes more corporate and sterile we ain’t so “vibrant” anymore.
Good bye Burlington Telecom – Goodbye First Night. Thanks for nothing – again – Milo.
It is a shame to see this end but I agree with the post about the performers. We used to take our kids when they were little and now they do have other interests and we have not been to First night in several years. A major reason is not the weather but the acts that were booked, these were not acts that interested us.