Costa Mesa’s Arts Festival Is Periled by Lack of Green

With a record 12,000 visitors on Sunday, up 50% from last year, Costa Mesa’s annual Arts on the Green one-day cultural celebration seemed to live up to its theme of “Continuous Creativity.” Continuous cash, however, is a problem that threatens the festival’s future.

“We are going to give it the best try we can (next year),” said Carol Heywood, chairwoman of the event, organized by the Costa Mesa Chamber of Commerce. “But we’re worried. If we can’t convince the business community that this is a worthwhile event, then we’re going to have a problem. It gets more expensive every year.”

Funding for the fair, which has a $60,000 price tag and ended in the black Sunday, is provided by the city of Costa Mesa and businesses in the city. Funding from the city ($20,000 this year) has remained consistent, Heywood said.

But the survival of the festival, which features presentations by dozens of cultural organizations throughout the county, depends upon finding new corporate donors, Heywood said. Such new donors were virtually non-existent this year. (One new donor was found, but that was offset by the loss of one previous donor.)

“That’s partly the (fair’s chief organizing) committee’s fault, but also, businesses are not responding. . . . We can’t keep going to the same funding sources year after year and assume that they are going to continue to fund us year after year. All nonprofit organizations must find new funding sources,” Heywood said.

Compounding the problem, the fair received less than it did previously from C. J. Segerstrom & Sons, its most generous corporate contributor, Heywood said. The firm, which owns the Town Center Park land on which the event takes place, has donated $10,000, as well as the fair site and technical assistance, for the past five years. This year Segerstrom gave $7,500, she said.

A spokesman for the firm was not immediately available for comment, but Heywood said: “It is unfair to keep relying on one source for the bulk of our funding.”

Heywood believes that the failure of businesses to respond is indicative of a countywide problem in which “businesses don’t have as much money to give as they used to.”

Heywood, who said festival visitors were solicited for donations in the program this year for the first time, stressed that contributions from Orange County cities outside of Costa Mesa are particularly important.

“We’ve had a hard time convincing some businesses that this is not strictly a Costa Mesa event, although groups from San Juan Capistrano to Long Beach take part.”

Two hands-on children’s events that Bowers Museum planned to host never materialized, Heywood said, because museum officials “never got to the right place” at the fair.

Last year, about 8,000 attended the fair.