Last Saturday, around 10,000 people came to Main Street to participate in the revival of the Taste of Northampton. A longtime cornerstone of Northampton’s annual event calendar, the Taste made a return after a roughly 20-year hiatus. Some 30 restaurants and vendors served food, beverages, arranged flowers, performed circus acts, blew bubbles and entertained with live music, filling the heart of Northampton with a community celebration that felt like a reawakening of downtown.
With Main Street closed to vehicular traffic from Old South Street to King Street, the Taste of Northampton was, as one retailer put it, exactly the sort of joyful gathering that we needed as the summer comes to a close.
Thrilled with how the event turned out, Amy Cahillane, executive director of the Downtown Northampton Association, described downtown as a “sea of happy faces” as people reveled in the best of what Northampton has to offer.
For me, this event proves yet again that businesses, organizations, volunteers, and government can come together to accomplish amazing things. Everyone stepped up to throw one of the most amazing parties I’ve seen downtown. I’m grateful to the commonwealth for supporting our efforts to bring back this beloved event to Northampton.
The original Taste of Northampton was held in the Armory Street parking lot over four days for most of the 1990s and early 2000s. A group of restaurateurs approached the city in 2019 about a possible revival in the summer of 2020, but the pandemic sidelined the effort.
Two years later, in the spring of 2022, my economic development team began to seek funding for a host of ideas to support downtown economic recovery. We saw in Northampton, as elsewhere, that the pandemic made people concerned to attend gatherings, which dramatically decreased the number of trips they made to downtown and greatly stressed our treasured businesses. It also reduced the local tax and parking revenue the city collects.
The question in my office became, “How do we get people to come back while feeling safe?” In answer, I gravitated, as did Mayor David Narkewicz before me, toward supporting outdoor entertainment of all kinds.
Northampton enjoyed rapid success with outdoor dining initiatives and public-private cooperative installations like Summer on Strong and Masonic Street Live! that combined food and entertainment. Still, planning and executing a large-scale Taste of Northampton event seemed like a lot to ask from restaurants still facing pandemic-related challenges, staffing shortages, and rising costs on everything from avocados to cooking oil.
Then came the availability of COVID-19 economic recovery funds from the Regional Economic Development Organization (REDO). My office teamed up with the DNA to seek funding to bring back the Taste, and thanks to a $50,000 grant, we were able to pay for most of the costs related to the event.
Then the real work began. With only about two months to plan, the DNA, restaurants, beverage companies, entertainers, vendors, and nearly every city department collaborated to plan and execute last Saturday’s one-day event.
“It was an amazing day, brought together by so many people who wanted to bring back the Taste. Everyone who worked the event for us this year asked to come back and do it again. We would definitely do it again next year — it was that much fun!” said Roberto’s restaurant co-owner Peter St. Martin.
As with any large-scale event, there were lessons learned. There was disappointment that some restaurants ran out of food early; others felt the recycling and composting efforts could have been better. Set-up could have been more smooth. But in the end, the sea of happy faces and people dancing in the street won the day, as I can report that the city departments and the organizers are already meeting to discuss next year’s event.
I want to thank everyone who worked so hard to plan the 2022 Taste of Northampton and to everyone who came and supported this wonderful day on Main Street and made its return a triumphant success.
Gina-Louise Sciarra is the mayor of Northampton.