Tuscaloosa Inks Agreement To Host Kentuck Festival In 2024

TUSCALOOSA, AL — In a move many would've viewed as inconceivable a few months ago, the City of Tuscaloosa on Wednesday announced it has entered a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Kentuck Art Center to bring the 53rd Kentuck Festival of the Arts to Tuscaloosa.

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This comes after the Tuscaloosa City Council on Tuesday unanimously approved the vague agreement without elaborating on what the MOU entailed. On Wednesday, however, Tuscaloosa Mayor Walt Maddox made an official announcement saying that the MOU authorizes the mayor to execute a separate memorandum of understanding between the city and Kentuck to bring the festival across the river from Northport to Tuscaloosa.

“We are immensely grateful for the outpouring of support we’ve received from all corners of the state,” Kentuck Art Center Board of Directors President Bobby Bragg said. “Thank you to the City of Tuscaloosa for their quick action, respect for the arts, and partnership moving forward.”

Indeed, the action taken by the City Council and the mayor was noticeably expedient, with the MOU making it onto the full council agenda Tuesday night without a public hearing or being taken up by any of the council's committees.

In the future, however, the MOU says the city will assign a public safety representative to participate in the Festival Steering Committee, which will have monthly meetings on the third Tuesday of each month, beginning in March 2024.

“In the last several days, we have worked with Kentuck to explore ways to retain the festival in our region,” Maddox said. “This festival is a nationally recognized and time-honored event, and it was critical it stay in our community.”

The six-page MOU was signed Wednesday by Maddox and Kentuck Art Center Executive Director Amy Echols, with the city committing to financially support the festival and provide organizers with city resources.

The 53rd Kentuck Festival of the Arts is set for Oct. 19-20, 2024, which is the weekend of the University of Alabama's football game at Tennessee.

Still, as part of this agreement, Tuscaloosa has now committed to providing additional operational funding in an amount to be determined following site selection for the festival, with potential locations being Parker-Hahn Park or Snow Hinton Park.

With this in mind, the city has agreed to consider and designate the area that the festival encompasses — wherever that may be — as an “entertainment district” for the weekend of the festival, which will allow the sale of craft beer on festival grounds.

Kentuck's Board of Directors will retain the right to select the site of the next festival, while also retaining the latitude to request funding and support from the Tuscaloosa County Commission.

The city also pointed out in the MOU that it is already providing Kentuck with $20,000 in agency funding for FY 2024, which will now be boosted by additional operational funding for the festival.

The city said the exact partnership agreement will be determined once a site for the festival is selected. In the short term, though, officials are celebrating the agreement as a landmark victory for Tuscaloosa.

“The Kentuck Festival of the Arts is one of the greatest treasures this county has seen,” City Council President Kip Tyner said. “I’m proud that the City could provide an opportunity to keep Kentuck here. The Council and I look forward to working with them.”

The MOU also included quarterly benchmarks for the city's obligations, with the first quarter of the new calendar year scheduled to see Kentuck's marketing team meeting with the city's marketing team to create a strategy to support Kentuck’s efforts in recruiting artists to apply to the jury process to become a Festival artist.

In the second quarter of 2024, the city and Kentuck's marketing teams will meet again to collaborate on a strategy to announce festival dates and help distribute information to potential corporate supporters and volunteers.

This will be followed in the third financial quarter of the year by a marketing push by Kentuck during the last three weeks ahead of the festival, which Tuscaloosa has agreed to supplement with its marketing team and tourism efforts.

The city also says it will issue Kentuck a “flea market” license for the festival, which will save on artists having to purchase individual business licenses.

While excitement abounds in Tuscaloosa City Hall, the news has not been well-received north of the river, with the City of Northport facing the loss of its largest annual event that attracts more than 10,000 visitors a year.

Worse still for Northport is that the city now stands to lose the festival's economic impact — a highly debated figure that Kentuck officials insist is around $5 million annually for the entire Tuscaloosa metropolitan area.

"I think it's a bad deal for the citizens of Northport who worked hard and made this a tradition for the past 52 years," Northport District 2 Councilman Woodrow Washington III said of losing the festival, which is held each year in his district. "I just feel like Kentuck is making a business move for themselves and decided to choose Tuscaloosa over Northport, who sponsored them for this long. I just wish they would have looked at the tradition over the business deal."

ALSO READ: COLUMN | Unanswered Questions Persist In Battle For Kentuck

Northport Council President Jeff Hogg has been perhaps the most visible official to make public attempts to get Kentuck's Board of Directors back to the negotiating table. And, at the same time, he has been publicly critical of the lack of transparency from Kentuck leadership as the nonprofit entered talks with Tuscaloosa after negotiations broke down over the city's annual funding for the nonprofit.

As Patch previously reported, Kentuck declined a last-minute invitation to meet with Northport officials on Tuesday ahead of the Tuscaloosa City Council meeting that saw the MOU unanimously approved with little fanfare and even less clarity. To many, this signaled the damaged state of Northport's longstanding relationship with Kentuck, with the city now faced with losing the festival after over half a century.

"No matter what happens, the City of Northport’s offer of meeting and unanimously approved funding agreement still remains intact," Hogg told Patch on Wednesday. "The mayor and Council stand ready, when or if, Kentuck decides to open their hearts."

ALSO READ: Tuscaloosa Mayor Refutes Northport Council President's Kentuck Claims

District 1 Councilwoman and Pro Tem Christy Bobo chairs the Council's Finance Committee and expressed her disappointment at the prospect of Northport losing the festival, before saying nothing has indicated if this decision by Kentuck is a temporary measure or a permanent idea.

"What I can tell you is that I have grown up from an age before I even have memories through my adult life, attending the festival and supporting the efforts of the community in celebration of the festival," Bobo told Patch on Wednesday. "My mother took me every year until I was old enough to drive. Beyond those memories, I even have an old flyer packed away from my senior year of high school from the Kentuck Festival. I kept it as a treasured and beloved memory of our group’s weekend spent enjoying the arts together."

Despite the public vitriol that has, at times, been on display during the battle over the future of the festival, Bobo went on to say that the city of Northport, the city of Tuscaloosa, and Tuscaloosa County elected officials all respect one another and value one another in such a manner that there is no bad spirits or contention toward one another over an agency desiring to make changes.

"While a move would hurt my own heart, and many of our citizens who have similar memories, feelings and volunteer hours with the agency," she said. "I know that sometimes tough decisions must be made and wish Kentuck the very best with future endeavors."

District 4 Councilwoman Jamie Dykes has maintained close relationships with members of the Kentuck Board and also lamented the negative impact losing the festival will have on the quality of life in Northport.

"I am incredibly distressed and saddened to hear this news," Dykes told Patch on Wednesday. "I have had numerous conversations with people on the board at Kentuck pleading and hoping they would remain with Northport as their home. I have attended the Festival since its inception and cherish those memories."

Dykes went on to say that her deepest regret relating to the controversy over Kentuck and the festival is that both sides were unable to overcome the hurt and miscommunication.

"While I am upset that we are losing Kentuck, I do not blame Tuscaloosa in the least," she said. "I know that cities all over the South have reached out to Kentuck to offer up another home for them. Kentuck was truly the crown jewel of Northport. And they will be missed and I am just saddened that I didn’t have the opportunity to have more conversations with [Board Chair Bobby Bragg] and [Executive Director Amy Echols] like I wanted. I wish them nothing but the very best. And to Tuscaloosa: take good care of them.”

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