Posted on May 9, 2012

Cost, Flash Mobs Cancel Coventry Street Arts Fair This Year

Ellen McGregor, News Channel 5, May 8, 2012

There will be no Coventry Street Arts Fair this summer in Cleveland Heights [Ohio].

Steve Presser is the owner of Big Fun, and member of the Coventry Village Special Improvement District. He’s been involved with the fair for years. The primary issues that resulted in the cancelation are cost and planning.

“We love it, we enjoy it, but we don’t want anything negative to happen to the neighborhood,” Presser said. “We want people to leave here feeling great.”

Presser has major plans on how the festival is put together for 2013, and he said there will be a fair next year.

The fair was a huge success for most of the day last year, drawing 25,000 people from all over the region. But towards the end of the day it was marred by several arrests following what witnesses called a “chaotic flash mob.”

Crowds of teens jammed onto Coventry in June 2011, fighting and causing trouble. At that time, Cleveland Heights council members said families were intimidated, and businesses were forced to close early for safety reasons.

So council held emergency meetings and enacted an emergency curfew from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., for anyone under 18 years old.

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[Editor’s Note: For more on last year’s disruption, see this article.]