Broadway Square in downtown Fargo/Fargo Park District
FARGO (KFGO) – A committee is looking at revamping the process to host events in downtown Fargo. Changes are coming to the application process, and possibly to city ordinance.
Members of the committee, including city commissioners, Fargo Police, representatives of various city departments, and downtown business partners met for an informational meeting on Monday.
The group talked about event safety, road closures, fees for event hosts, the application process and timeline, and permits for events that serve alcohol.
“There is no current permitting requirements for the city of Fargo on the alcohol side. Vendors can use a state permit to come to an event on a Fargo city street and use a state permit to serve alcohol at that event. Our PD doesn’t know, security, you know all the things that come with alcohol being served at an event,” explains Kevin Gorder with the City of Fargo Permitting and Licensing.
Gorder says alcohol permitting for downtown events is already on the radar of the Liquor Control Board.
The committee plans to keep the online application process, but make it more in-depth. Event coordinators will need to provide an emergency plan, communications plan, site plan, and an attendance estimate to help determine how to staff the event.
The committee is also proposing a longer application process to give city staff a chance to review the event details. Events being held January through April would need to apply for an event permit by Oct. 1 of the previous year. Applications for events held May through August must be submitted by Feb. 1 of the current year.
There would be an exception process for groups who aren’t able to plan an event that far in advance and an appeal process for events that are denied.
The committee hopes to create templates for repeat events and those of different sizes, but it could come at a cost to the city.
“There are software solutions out there that can help us manage all of these things. I think Captain Moser found one that is an estimated $40,000 annual fee to use it, so it’s a big number but it does walk it through basically from beginning to end. It was a really cool software, it’s just a matter of the cost,” Gorder explains.
Local event coordinators and the committee agree that different events will come with varying requirements and levels of security, which the event coordinators may end up paying for in the future.
“Different events require different security, but to do it for free, first of all we can’t afford to do that anymore. We don’t want to tax them out of business, but we have to be compensated. All the staff time that this takes, we will be compensated for our time,” said Fargo City Commissioner Dave Piepkorn. “I want to make sure we’re in competition with the market and so we’re not overly charging, but we have to start getting compensated for all this stuff.”
When it comes to event fees, the committee is checking with other cities of similar size, such as Sioux Falls, Bismarck and Duluth.
In addition to determining a fee scale, the city is also considering a deposit for event clean-up. If the host cleans up, the deposit would be returned. If the city has to provide any post-event clean-up, it would come out of the deposit.
The last time the city modified the process for event permitting was about 12 years ago.
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