November 17, 2008, 11:57 p.m.
TEYA VITU
Tucson Citizen
Alcohol-free, family-oriented New Year's Eve entertainment will fill downtown from 4 p.m. to midnight Dec. 31 as Tucson joins 107 other American cities that stage First Night arts festivals.
More than 40 staged events will take place continuously in 45-minute cycles at the Leo Rich Theatre, Beowulf Alley Theatre, the Scottish Rite Cathedral and the Tucson Children's Museum as well as on outside stages at La Placita Village, the Tucson Music Hall and in front of the children's museum.
A badge gets one into all the indoor events, and the outdoor events are free. Badges cost $12 each for everyone 13 or older, $6 for children 6 to 12, and children 5 and younger get in free.
Tickets will go on sale in the first week of December, said Glenn Lyons, chief executive of the Downtown Tucson Partnership, which is putting on the event.
Soon after Lyons arrived in Tucson in February, he had the idea to stage an arts-oriented theater crawl on New Year's Eve.
"What I want people to do is come downtown and enjoy themselves and realize there is a whole host of opportunities for them for family entertainment," Lyons said. "There's a lot of music, some comedy and theater shorts."
Lyons had 4,000 badges printed for the inaugural First Night, but his target in future years will be 20,000 to 30,000 attendees, which he says is the typical attendance in similar-sized cities that stage First Nights.
"In any given hour, we can seat about 1,000 people indoors," Lyons said.
Boston launched the initial First Night in 1976 as a finale to the bicentennial year. That eventually spawned First Night International, a Johnson City, N.Y.,-based organization that provides the First Night framework. This is based on the Four Pillars: community, celebration, the new year and the arts.
Tucson joins big cities such as Pittsburgh and Birmingham, Ala., and smaller cities such Fullerton, Calif., and Monterey, Calif., that all have New Year's Eve celebrations affiliated with First Night International.
Lyons estimates the cost at $100,000, with $15,000 supplied by Cox Communications and $5,000 each from the offices of Mayor Bob Walkup and Tucson City Councilwoman Nina Trasoff and from the Tucson Pima Arts Council. TPAC is covering the cost of outdoor stages at the children's museum and La Placita Village. In-kind support valued at $60,000 will come in the way of media advertising.
Government organizations hope the expenditure will help bring activity to downtown.
