Newtown Lane Street Fair a Success
The East Hampton Chamber of Commerce’s first street fair, held on May 20 on Newtown Lane, was, by most accounts, a great success. Hundreds of year-round residents and visitors alike strolled the street to stop at booths set up by artists, nonprofits, artisans, and others in an event that ran from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Based on the warm reception the fair received, the chamber can be expected to seek to organize it again in the future.
If there was one complaint, however, it was about the fair’s location. Laid out along the center of the several hundred yards of pavement from Main Street to the Reutershan parking lot entrance, the booths drew attention away from the facades of Newtown Lane’s shops and may have dissuaded some would-be retail customers from coming to the village. Usual Saturday sales were off in some cases.
The suggestion has been made that in the future, the fair be placed in another location, perhaps farther up Newtown Lane in front of the middle school. We disagree. The sense of community and good will that the street fair created would be diminished in a more remote location, even a block farther away from the Main Street intersection. The number of random visitors who happen upon it while headed east or west on Route 27 would be diminished as well. And the remarkably festive feeling of being in a normally busy street would be difficult to capture in any other location, or even midweek, as some have suggested.
As for the retailers along Newtown Lane, at a future fair they could make more of an effort to get in on the action, laying out sale items or handing out free promotional swag to promote good will and build brand recognition. Those business owners who are not members of the chamber of commerce might take the opportunity to join and make any opposing views heard instead of sniping after the fact.
Considering that Newtown Lane is a public street, that the village board, as the public’s representative, backed the fair in the first place, and that attendance was stellar, it should be allowed to return.