DATE: Thursday, June 5, 1997                TAG: 9706050531

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B5   EDITION: FINAL 
SOURCE: BY NANCY LEWIS, STAFF WRITER 
DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:   60 lines

HARBORFEST AND MERCHANTS WORK FOR IMPROVED WATERFRONT PARTY

For years, retailers and restaurateurs corralled within the sweeping arc of Waterside Drive have played second fiddle to the Harborfest vendors who sold their wares in Town Point Park.

Because of Harborfest's traditional kickoff at noon Friday, businesses closed early. Customers, they said, were put off by barricaded streets and bagged parking meters.

But this year, with help from Norfolk Festevents Ltd. - which is staging the event for the first time - the 65-member Downtown District Association agreed to join in the fun, in exchange for a few concessions.

Harborfest will start at 5 p.m. Friday instead of noon. Parking meters will not be covered until Saturday. Festivalgoers and regular customers alike will be able to access the downtown district by way of Granby Street.

In exchange, the businesses agreed to host warmup parties with freebies and promos.

Karen Scherberger, Festevents director, said strong association between event producers and community is characteristic of the most successful festivals in the country - the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, for example.

As things were for the Norfolk fest, ``the business community felt shut out,'' she said. But the new cooperation is ``a step in the right direction.''

It wasn't so much the money he lost on the last business day each Harborfest week that bothered Wiley Francisco, one of the owners of Calvin & Lloyd, a shop specializing in fine home furnishings and design. It was the tarnished trade image that raised his ire.

``It left a bad taste in customers' mouths'' when easy access to his store was cut off, said Francisco. He said that most downtown merchants didn't keep shop on weekends anyway, so only Friday was an issue. Francisco is taking a wait-and-see attitude about the changes.

Sydney Meers, owner of The Dumbwaiter Restaurant on Tazewell Street, lauded the new approach. Meers said efforts to include business in Harborfest in past years failed, because it takes folks with business heads on their shoulders to know what works.

``That's why we formed the organization,'' he said.

The Downtown District Association came into being last fall, in large part because Harborfest had come to represent so many negatives for the business people, said Marilyn Helms, executive director of the fledgling group.

``In the downtown, we predominantly small businesses had no way to market ourselves,'' she said.

The people at Festevents came to the association and asked how they could improve the relationship, said Helms, who owns and operates Etceteras, a contemporary handcraft shop, in Selden Arcade.

While Harborfest had become a sticking point for businesses on the land side of Waterside Drive, the opposite was true for the more than 100 businesses in Waterside Marketplace, said Vann Massey, vice president and general manager.

Massey said he welcomed the new, all-inclusive festival marketing approach. ``The more that downtown as a whole is exposed . . . and celebrates all the business, the better,'' he said. ILLUSTRATION: Wiley Francisco, a businessman, says beginning the

festival at noon on Friday limited access to downtown stores.

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