Less than an hour after Saturday’s house fire on Palmer Street was declared arson, Athens and Ohio University officials met to discuss the future of the spring fests.
At an unannounced meeting Monday, city and university officials discussed
Saturday’s Palmer Fest and decided Mill Fest will go on as planned.
Six top Athens officials — including Mayor Paul Wiehl and City Council
President Jim Sands — met with OU President Roderick McDavis and other OU officials at Cutler Hall to discuss the future of fests in Athens.
“The decision was made that it would be less likely to cause out-of-control behavior to go ahead with fests that are already in place this year,” Sands said.
Among those in attendance were Service-Safety Director Paula Horan-Moseley, Assistant Service-Safety Director Ron Lucas, Fire Chief Robert Troxel, Athens Police Chief Tom Pyle and Vice President for Student Affairs Kent Smith, Sands said.
Though the futures of next spring’s fests are still unclear, it’s not necessarily due to the fire at 11 Palmer St.
OU’s transition to semesters could tame the fests with fewer weekends with nice weather, Sands said.
“Basically the question was thrown out about (next year’s fests), and the answer was, ‘Nobody knows,’ ” Sands said.
The meeting came in the wake of a fire that broke out at Palmer Fest and led to the evacuation of thousands of partiers. Within half an hour of the fire’s beginning, Wiehl declared Palmer Street a riot area and police cleared the street of festgoers.
The Ohio Fire Marshal declared the fire arson Monday after investigators determined a person or persons forcibly gained entry into the basement of 11 Palmer St. and started the fire, said Shane Cartmill, spokesman for the Marshal’s office.
The marshal’s office is offering a $5,000 reward for information that leads to the arrest of the person who started the fire.
Though there could be some economic benefit to the fests, the unruly behavior could reflect negatively on all parties involved, said Becky Watts, chief of staff to McDavis and chairwoman of the Board of Directors of the Athens Area Chamber of Commerce.
“Any potential benefit that these unsanctioned, unauthorized events could have is completely negated by the harm to public safety, the harm to the community’s reputation, the harm to the university’s reputation and the basic harm that these events encourage,” she said in an email.
The decision to allow the fests to continue was the right thing to do, said Kyle Richert, an OU senior who lives at 11 Palmer.
“It’s tradition. They shouldn’t ban it just because one thing happened,” he said. “It could have happened any other time.”
Though McDavis is disappointed in some of the behaviors seen during the weekend, he is pleased with Monday’s meeting, Jennifer Krisch, a spokeswoman for the university, said in an email.
“Today (he) prioritized a meeting with Mayor Wiehl, Council Chair Sands and city officials to make an assessment of activities and work to develop communication strategies moving forward to emphasize the need for public safety as a top priority,” she said.
Wiehl could not be reached for comment by press time.
A joint announcement from the university and the city will be released later this week, Krisch said.
— Brian Vadakin contributed to this report.
jj360410@ohiou.edu
