Opening Night
Festivals have aimed to please throughout their histories
Whether downtown fades into obscurity or bursts into a Technicolor kaleidoscope of urban living, Arts Council Oklahoma City’s mission remains the same — celebrating arts and the community.
The organization, its staff, cadres of volunteers and supporting businesses have maintained that mantra since starting work on Oklahoma City’s first-ever Festival of the Arts and Opening Night events.
The decades have marched by since. Along the way, organizers have adapted those events to fit the community’s needs. And, when it comes to needing to change those events to accommodate improvements in the city’s downtown core, well, that’s just some good gravy. Peter Dolese, Arts Council Oklahoma City’s executive director, notes the organization’s events remain just as important today as they were in their beginnings.
“We are here for a reason,” he said, “kind of like a flag. We are here to stay, and we are here for you. These events are important to our community’s identity.”
In the beginning
The Festival of the Arts was started by a newly formed Oklahoma City Arts Council on the park plaza fronting Oklahoma City’s Civic Center Music Hall in 1967.
While raising needed money was difficult for the first event, organizers pulled it off and held it there each year until 1985, when the event moved west and south a little bit to be centered near and in a super block bordered Reno Avenue on the south, Sheridan Avenue on the north, Walker Avenue on the west and Hudson Avenue on the east. California Avenue bisected the block’s center, running east to west.
On the north end of the block was the Stage Center Theater. Fronting California’s south side between Walker and Hudson were three buildings owned by the City of Oklahoma City that previously had been downtown’s main fire station and its training center.
The area effectively was on the cusp of being at ground zero of Oklahoma City’s failed urban renewal plans hatched decades earlier. Sitting just across Hudson to the east on another super block was an only partially complete Myriad Gardens. North of the gardens was another super block intended for redevelopment as a downtown shopping mall, which also never happened.
Still, both elected and civic leaders were anxious to get something positive going, and creating a new arts district anchored by Stage Center, the Myriad Gardens and a headquarters for the arts council was the plan they created.
The arts festival, they decided, would be held on California Avenue between Walker and Hudson and on Hudson between Sheridan and Reno.
The arts council adopted the block as its new headquarters, moved its offices there from the Paseo, raised needed money to renovate the fire station and training buildings and secured permission from the city to permanently close California Avenue on the block so that needed underground plumbing and power conduits for the festival could be installed.
The organization also used pavers to cover the closed section of California Avenue, making the area into a new home for the annual spring festival, which already was considered a top arts event in the U.S.
The festival flourished there, accomplishing its goal of successfully attracting people back into downtown Oklahoma City, if only for a week each year.
As time went on, it became one of the most popular of many events that to this day draw people back to the urban core.
But moving the festival of the arts wasn’t the only step they took to try to revitalize the downtown area.
In 1987, they pushed the envelope farther, announcing in August of that year that Oklahoma City would join 13 others in the nation to hold an “Opening Night” event.
The Arts Council and partnering organizers chose an area of downtown bordered by Leadership Square on the west, Kerr Plaza on the north, the Skirvin Plaza Hotel on the east and the Robinson Renaissance on the south as the area for the event.
Their goal was to create an alcohol-free, family friendly event designed to turn unusual spaces such as building lobbies and outdoor plazas at 10 different locations into performance venues.
It also included a MardiGras style parade kicking off an hour before midnight, passing all the venues and leading to Kerr Plaza, the designated location for people to gather for the night’s Grand Finale event.
There, a laser light show led up to the fireworks display that ushered in the New Year.
The Oklahoma City Museum of Arts also participated that year by agreeing to hold its annual New Year’s Eve Dance at the Skirvin Plaza Hotel.
Organizers estimated about 18,000 people attended the initial Opening Night celebration.
Making room
As each of these events continued, both grew with the help of organizers, volunteers and businesses making in-kind donations. In 1996, the Festival of the Arts featured more than 140 artists, continuous entertainment, international food booths, craft demonstrations and more.
By 2006, it had grown into an event that spread from Walker to Robinson Avenue between Reno and Sheridan, including the entire Myriad Gardens.
It included the artists, the food, a venue for artists and Oklahoma City celebrities to create unusual art, stages full of musical and other entertainment, and a whole area dedicated to letting children make their own art and take it home.
Opening Night in 1996, meanwhile, featured nearly two dozen performing acts in various venues including the First National Center, Leadership Square, Bank of Oklahoma, the Myriad, Stage Center, the Oklahoma County Courthouse, Oklahoma Tower and the Oklahoma Hardware Building in Bricktown.
In 2006, it featured 40 performing groups in 13 venues, including several in Bricktown. In later years, NBA games at the Ford Center/Chesapeake Arena became a norm on New Year’s Eve, too.
But changes happening in Bricktown and Deep Deuce, such as added surface parking just east of the Santa Fe Railway Viaduct and the beginnings of work on The Maywood Apartments, the Level Urban Apartments and Aloft Oklahoma City, required Opening Night organizers to tweak its signature event — the Grand Finale fireworks display.
Because of restrictions the encroaching developments presented, organizers had to limit the locations from where they could shoot fireworks, and, how large those fireworks could be.
Still, they loved the Grand Finale location, as it was framed by the 101 Park Avenue Building, the Sonic Building, and Kerr McGee Tower.
“As the fireworks exploded, you could see their reflections on surrounding structures,” said Dolese, who helped orchestrate the event for many years. “People felt like they were hugged by the buildings.”
One year, organizers creatively used the Sonic Building’s east face as a projection screen, bringing in a large carbon arc light projector and an operator in from Dallas. The projector and its operator showed cartoons leading up to the Grand Finale, and then, showed a “Final 10” countdown to midnight that featured works of art by Festival of the Arts artists.
But once SandRidge Energy purchased the Kerr McGee Tower and the adjacent Kerr Park for redevelopment, organizers were forced to move the Grand Finale location to the Myriad Gardens for the 2011 Opening Night event.
This location, they discovered, didn’t work so well, as the hundreds of mature trees throughout the park obstructed viewers’ line of sight, despite attempts the next two years to relocate launch points for the fireworks to alleviate the situation.
MAPS 3 arrives
Oklahoma City voters’ approval of the MAPS 3 proposition ultimately prompted Arts Council Oklahoma City to once again consider where it should hold both of its signature events.
In 2013, organizers still were evaluating where the best Grand Finale location for the New Year’s Eve celebration needed to be.
They also realized the arts council eventually would lose the ability to hold the Festival of the Arts on Hudson Avenue because of the future installation of a new downtown rail system that would travel down the center of that street.
For Opening Night 2014, they moved the Grand Finale to Bicentennial Park between the Civic Center Music Hall and City Hall. Also, they moved the event’s performance venues to buildings surrounding the park.
The Festival of the Arts followed in 2016, anticipating not only the streetcar system, but also a planned development of a new multistory building for OGE Energy.
Both Oklahoma City and its economic development trust helped Arts Council OKC make the moves by investing funds in the park to upgrade its electrical and other infrastructural offerings.
The 2016 Festival of the Arts attracted crowds of more than 100,000 each of its six days. It featured 144 artists, a sculpture park area, a children’s area, three performing arts stages and more than 100 tents.
Dolese likes the change, as it puts these long-running arts events in the heart of the city’s Arts District, as it exists today. He also enjoys using Bicentennial Park for Opening Night’s Grand Finale, as the two art deco buildings on either end of the park and the city skyline further east provide excellent backdrops for its fireworks display.
Also, the park is small enough to feel crowded, like Times Square, whenever thousands of people gather there.
The view is key, he added.
“Whenever you can get reflections in the buildings, it celebrates them. It makes those buildings look completely different from they do any other time,” Dolese said, “and, for that eight minutes, you are in a wonderland, where you are sharing something historic in a beautiful moment.
“You can’t replace the value of that in the hearts of those people who come.”
No doubt, despite changes made throughout the years, these events continue to attract hundreds of thousands of people to an area where they might not otherwise go.
If the weather is agreeable on Dec. 31, as many as 60,000 people may attend this year’s Dec. 31 celebration.
“People love it, and enjoy being able to go,” he said. “These types of events help demystify downtown.”