Uptown concerts bring relief to High Street businesses during summer months
During the slow summer months, many Oxford businesses need a boost. The Uptown Concert Series helps bring people to High Street while students are away.
Every Thursday throughout the summer, hundreds of Oxford residents gather in the Uptown parks to enjoy live music.
For attendees, the Uptown Concert Series is a way to enjoy live performances, get together with friends and break up the monotony of summer nights. For Oxford’s businesses, the series is a much-needed lifeline in the summer months.
“The hope is to extend the long weekend,” said Kim Daggy, executive director of Enjoy Oxford. The visitor’s bureau has hosted the concert series for 38 seasons. “When students are gone, we have activities Uptown to bring people to our business district.”
This year’s Uptown Concert Series ran every week June 6 through Aug. 29. Dozens of local businesses help sponsor the series by providing funding to pay for the musicians, sound technicians, promotional materials and other expenses, Daggy said.
The bands vary widely in genre and appeal. Fleetwood Gold, a fan favorite Fleetwood Mac tribute band, opened the series this year and attracted at least 1000 people, according to Enjoy Oxford’s projections. Other bands like the Butler Philharmonic Orchestra, Stephen Gould and the Jim Burns Band attracted between 300 and 500 attendees, Daggy estimated.
Since 2020, the concert series has also benefited from the city’s designated outdoor drinking area (DORA), which allows customers to buy drinks at participating businesses and bring them outside Uptown in specially marked cups. Before the DORA existed, Daggy said a lot of attendees would go home at intermission, but now more people stay until the end of the night.
“Now, with the DORA in effect, even when we’re cleaning up, people will still be hanging out in the Uptown district, relaxing like it’s their own backyard,” Daggy said.
This season was the first summer that OxVegas Chicken has been open. Tyler Storer, a cofounder of the restaurant, said the business might not have been able to operate from June to August if not for the Thursday concerts.
“We saw a lot of business at the bar through the DORA cups rather than food,” Storer said. “We definitely got some help from people ordering food from the concerts, but it was way more of a help to the bar than to the kitchen. That’s kind of where we were able to make up the sales.”
Thursdays were the best business days each week for OxVegas. Most customers took advantage of the store’s $4 Thursday margarita sales, Storer said, and enjoyed taking their drinks out to the park. He estimated that the business sold roughly 25-30 cups each Thursday.
Concert series performers range from classical musicians to tribute bands. Local businesses sponsor the events, which help bring residents Uptown during the slow summer months. Photos by Sean Scott
Marc Biales, owner of Wild Berry, said he thinks the concert series benefits restaurants more than retail businesses. Still, he’s made it a point to sponsor the series for decades because it contributes to the community atmosphere.
“There’s nothing better than live music, for me at least,” Biales said. “I love live music. I think it’s important, and it does get our name out there.”
Wild Berry was one of seven gold sponsors of the concert series this year, the highest level. At some of the concerts, Biales said they got to set up a booth to do merch giveaways and be more visible at the event.
Oxford itself has also worked to make the city more eventful over the summer. Seth Cropenbaker, economic development director, said the concert series fits into the city’s goals of creative placemaking — efforts to help a broad range of members in the community engage with one another.
Cropenbaker, who grew up in Millville, came to some of the Thursday concerts himself as a kid. Once he got his license, he said he and his friends would come up once a month to hang out Uptown, and it was almost like his first concert experience. Now that he works for the city, he gets to see the benefits these events have for the community.
“Not only does it help support the city’s goals about vibrancy, about supporting our economy and our entrepreneurs, but I think it also is really part of the identity of Oxford,” Cropenbaker said. “It’s something we have done for almost 40 years. It’s been kind of a mainstay Uptown.”
The last Uptown concert of the season was held Aug. 29. Daggy said Enjoy Oxford will begin planning for the next summer of performances as early as January, lining up both sponsors and performers.
