Baltimore City Council committee confident Artscape will bounce back following pandemic hiatus
BALTIMORE -- There are 38 days left until the nation's largest free outdoor arts festival returns to Baltimore.
Artscape has been on a hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but it is set to kick off on Sept. 22.
WJZ is a proud media sponsor of the festival this year.
All of the agencies tasked with organizing Artscape spoke in front of a Baltimore City Council committee on Tuesday to give the council an idea of how the planning process is going.
The mayor's office, the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts, or BOPA, the city's Department of Transportation, and public safety agencies like the Baltimore Police Department gathered in front of the city council's Ways and Means Committee to give a progress report of logistics.
Jaz Erenberg is prepping a seven-mural installation in Baltimore's Station North neighborhood. The murals will be part of Artscape, which will be including the neighborhood in its festivities for the first time this year.
"The main goal for my piece is to show how bright, vibrant, happy, and joyful Baltimore can be—especially against what everybody says about us," Erenberg said.
As Erenberg spends the next few weeks touching up her artwork, Artscape's organizers continue to touch up their plans.
Most of their concerns revolve around traffic, especially given how busy the city will be when Sept. 22 rolls around given that there are other big events scheduled that same weekend.
"I should say all the credit should be given to DOT because they put a lot of work in and making sure we have a comprehensive traffic plan," Tanya Miller Hall, senior advisor to the Office of Arts & Culture for Mayor Brandon Scott, said.
Most of the traffic plans are still being finalized, but DOT said to expect many road and lane closures, I-83 southbound exit 4 will also be closed.
Artscape's schedule partially aims to accommodate some of the other events that will be happening within its footprint.
"We were gonna end both the main stage at 3 p.m. both on Saturday and Sunday to provide for the BSO gala, to move people into the gala, and to move people off the traditional footprint into Station North," BOPA's interim CEO Todd Yuhanick said.
District 11 councilman Eric Costello, who chairs the Ways and Means Committee, said as he was leaving the meeting that he was optimistic.
"Usually, for an event of this magnitude, DOT will have a traffic plan in place and approved a month out, so we're on track to meet that," Costello said. "We're on track to meet deadlines for our plans for public safety, so I think that things are moving in the right direction."
Meanwhile, Erenberg can't wait to be a part of it.
"It's been a real dream of mine," she said. "So, it's a big deal for me."
One thing Artscape organizers are hoping will help alleviate traffic that weekend is the fact that the light rail trains will be free. They're hoping a lot of people will use the trains as opposed to driving.
