Taste of St. Louis is following Blues Week to Chesterfield. They cite a lack of parking of all things.

Man, screw this.

http://www.stltoday.com/entertainment/d ... 6fb7c.html

^ this town can be so stupid.

Mike what are you thinking??????

Frankly, I hope it goes under. Let a more worthy venture pop up in it's place.

This is probably my favorite comment from the organizer. (Not all a direct quote, passed on by KMOX reporter Michael Calhoun.)

Michael Calhoun @michaelcalhoun
"It's not like we're moving to Kansas City," Taste organizer says. Suggests people can take MetroLink+MetroBus to get there.

You have to wonder how dense this guy is.

roger wyoming II wrote:from the article: "Maggie Crane, communications director for the City of St. Louis, puts the news in terms of the regional perspective rather than city vs. the county.

"It's still a good event for the region," Crane says. "Finding the best place [for them], that's great. We'll support it.""

Wow, that's a pretty la-dee-da attitude for having just lost two big festivals to a far-flung suburb. Either they have something better in the works or she isn't very good at her job - she supposed to be working for THE CITY, for cryin' out loud!

Nobody is going out to f-ckin' Chesterfield, Missourah to celebrate the music history if St. Louis, Missouri. It won't last another year. They'll do this last one in Chesterfield, nobody will show up, and then it's curtains. Either they move it back Downtown or they just stop having it.

This is very disappointing. The move alienates a large percentage region and everyone from the metro east. Part of what makes these festivals great (Bluesweek, Taste, etc.) is the background and energy of the City. Moving them to Chesterfield makes me think sterile and sad. Oh well. Maybe it will thrive there, maybe it will flop. Either way, it is no longer the Taste of St. Louis. It is the Taste of an Insulated, Isolated, Pretentious suburb of St. Louis and should be renamed as such.

dmmonty1 wrote:Wow, that's a pretty la-dee-da attitude for having just lost two big festivals to a far-flung suburb. Either they have something better in the works or she isn't very good at her job - she supposed to be working for THE CITY, for cryin' out loud!

There was a report this weekend via the Riverfront Times, that the City's in talks with an out-of-state event production company for a large-scale event. The details include a 20-year freeze out of other events for Memorial Day weekend and Labor Day weekend and an annual payment to the City up to $400,000.

Source: Riverfront Times

EntertainnmentSTL has been the City's go-to event producer, so they very well could have known about this plan and are preemptively moving their concepts out so as not to run into conflict on this new concert/event series. Being in Chesterfield would technically allow EntertainmentSTL events to directly compete with those in the City of St. Louis, if they chose. Hmmm....

With that said, if the BoA approved Phyllis Young's bill, it would effectively freeze out Big Muddy Blues Festival, which has been held on the Landing every Labor Day weekend for, what, 15+ years?

Something is going on here...

Entertainment Saint Louis is the production company that runs Taste of St. Louis and St. Louis Bluesweek Festival. And suddenly they are moving two of their biggest events to Chesterfield?

At the same time, a new company forms called "Summer Rocks, LLC", registered out of Delaware, but just created in January 2014 (if my quick google search is correct). This new promotion company would pay the city $400,000 per year and have exclusive rights to music festivals?

Is that their logo? Apples are for Webster!

I've either been eating way to many sour grapes or am i reading what im reading?? Really Chesterfield.. This is why fragmentation continues here.. Food Network or not keep it downtown..No event is better held than downtown. I simply love the feel of it... Parking really? People now a days are too lazy to walk 5-6 blocks after parking.. From eating all that food they could use the exercise...

siu850956106 wrote:I Live in Carbondale and have been to Taste of St. Louis 3 of the last 5 years. I will not drive to Chesterfield for it.

I live here and I won't drive to Chesterfield for it.

I, however, will drive down to Carbondale for Quattros a few times a year.

Like everyone else I was fairly upset about the move when I read the article in the Post this morning. However, after making a couple contacts I can safely say that there is more going on behind the scenes with this than is currently being made public. I would assume somebody in the media will piece it together in the near future and publicize it.

From what I gathered I can share that the first choice of organizers was not to move the event out of the city.

You can't go wrong with Chesterfield

I don't get this line from http://stlouis.cbslocal.com/2014/03/03/ ... sterfield/:

Marketing director K. Sonderegger further explained: ”A lot of the restaurants in Chesterfield, west county and St. Charles County were like ‘well, if I go down there and I advertise, are most of the people from downtown? Are they not going to want to come to my restaurant?”

There's a Taste of Clayton. If this had anything to do with it why not just make a separate "Taste of Chesterfield" or "Taste of West County?"

I'll start this by saying that I am resident of the city and was unhappy to hear that the Taste of SAINT LOUIS was moving out of St. Louis (proper). However, upon speaking to some other folks, I wonder if my initial reaction is a reflection of the extreme "localism" we seem to have here. If I want people from the county to support a vision of STL as one region, then why does it matter where in "St. Louis" this event takes place (with the understanding that Chesterfield is not currently a part of STL City)? While I would prefer the people and money they spend to be spent in the city, wouldn't it be better to lead with an example of the city and county working together to think more regionally?

As a side note, as other posters have mentioned, there probably is a much more simplistic (maybe logistic) reason why this is happening.

stlhistory wrote:Chesterfield has a permanent stage, lots of setup area, virtually unlimited free parking, and it is more central to the region's upper-middle class.

I don't agree that the 'upper middle class' location is a compelling reason to move. As an evening's entertainment goes, it wasn't all that pricey.