The annual Kentuck Festival of the Arts will likely move to the city of Tuscaloosa for 2024, following a unanimous vote by the Tuscaloosa City Council on Tuesday evening.
The council voted for a memorandum of understanding, a non-binding agreement that states each party’s plans to take action. If signed by the Kentuck Art Center, the two will then begin working out specifics.
The next move would be a memorandum of agreement, which establishes a conditional accord in which funds will exchange hands. The city of Tuscaloosa would provide in-kind services, and presumably funding as well, though details are not yet available.
“What the council voted on approved the mayor (Walt Maddox) to work out an MOU with Kentuck,” said Richard Rush, city of Tuscaloosa communications director. This is a basic start to relocating the festival, but not Kentuck’s base of operations, which remains at 503 Main Ave., in downtown Northport, in a campus of two buildings owned by the center. They rent the courtyard from Northport month-by-month.
“Kentuck still has to sign it, for it to be official,” Rush said.
If the plan moves on to an MOA, then to a contract of agreement, the city of Tuscaloosa would play host to the Kentuck Festival of the Arts for the first time in the event’s 50-plus years.
Founded after a 1971 downtown Northport heritage festival, Kentuck built its year-around art center, with workshops, classes and other outreach, studio artists’ space, exhibits, a gift shop and regular events such as first Thursday Art Nights, around the success of the two-day October festival, which draws about 20,000 visitors to what has been for its 52 years held in Northport’s Kentuck Park.
This step follows months of back-and-forth between the Northport City Council, which offered an amended contract at its Dec. 11 meeting, and Kentuck.
The art center’s leadership, including Board President Bobby Bragg and Executive Director Amy Echols, expressed a number of reservations about an earlier offer from Northport. That contract was for $68,000 funding per year, a dip from the 2023 $80,000, and looked to lock Kentuck into holding the festival in Northport for the next five years. Previous festival contracts had been year-to-year.
At the Oct. 14-15, 2023, festival, patrons and others expressed concern about a towering mound of dirt, 140,000 cubic yards, stockpiled next to the park, obtained for future use on Northport’s planned sports complex. Kentuck was concerned design and construction for the park might hinder future festivals.
The Dec. 11 new proposal offered to bump back up to $80,000, go back to year-to-year, and guarantee that the dirt would be stabilized, and covered in mesh, no less than 90 days before the festival.
Though Kentuck staff and board watched the council’s Dec. 11 livestream, they did not comment on Northport’s newer proposal, other than to say the board was still deliberating next steps.
In an email sent Monday Dec. 18, Northport Council President Jeff Hogg asked Kentuck for a meeting before Tuesday’s Tuscaloosa City Council agenda vote.
It read in part:
“While I am not surprised, as this gesture has been threatened for years against the City of Northport, I do want to once again make it known that the City of Northport has never wavered in our intention of having a long-standing partnership of the festival at Kentuck Park,” Hogg wrote. “With much publicity of this, I am requesting a meeting between the City of Northport and Kentuck prior to the Tuscaloosa Council meeting Tuesday evening in an effort for the festival to stay in Northport at Kentuck Park in the same area as it has for 52 years.”
Kentuck had announced in November that its board had voted to seek possible new spots, while wishing to keep the festival in Tuscaloosa County.
Reach Mark Hughes Cobb at [email protected].
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