The Northern Liberties Night Market is canceled after the costs of required police patrols and sanitation services have more than doubled

The cost of hosting a street fair in Philadelphia is too dang high, according to three Northern Liberties restaurateurs who are pausing their regular food truck markets. The price of required city services, they contend, has skyrocketed and makes putting on the popular events too expensive.

The Northern Liberties Arts and Commerce Alliance canceled its Night Market scheduled for July 23 after receiving a cost estimate of over $24,600 from the City of Philadelphia’s Office of Special Events. That’s more than double what the city charged the group on average for the events in 2023, said William Reed, cofounder of the alliance and co-owner of neighborhood gastropub Standard Tap.

“Every year we come back and the city bill is bigger. It’s just not sustainable anymore,” Reed said.

Reed, North Bowl owner Oron Daskal, and El Camino Real owner Owen Kamihira started the Northern Liberties Arts and Commerce Alliance in 2009 to administer the 2nd Street Festival, a twice-annual block party that draws thousands to a stretch of Second Street from Girard Avenue to Spring Garden Street for food and drink deals, craft vendors, and performances.

The group took over the Night Market from the Food Trust in 2021, turning it into a more consistent event that Reed said brings about 1,000 people to three blocks on Second Street between Fairmount Avenue and Laurel Street for a concentrated selection of food trucks throughout the spring, summer, and fall. Reed said 24 food trucks and 60 craft vendors had paid between $250 and $2,500 to be at the July event before it was canceled.

Both street fairs, organizers argue, have helped turn Northern Liberties into a development hot spot, drawing a mix of high-earning families and young professionals to a neighborhood where artists used to live among vacant warehouses. Leftover profits from the first 2nd Street Festivals helped establish the community’s business improvement district and maintain a public park, while the alliance’s Night Market is ranked as one of the best in the United States.

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“If we had any money to pay for a fancy consulting firm, they’d probably say the amount of what comes back to the city and Northern Liberties is far larger than what gets spent on these,” said Reed, who lives in Northern Liberties. “I can’t haggle about the costs of the police, but I can say this isn’t what the city should be doing.”

Now Reed, Kamihira, and other Northern Liberties business owners are concerned that the city’s prices will stop events like the Night Market from happening altogether, contradicting Philadelphia’s renewed push for open streets, events that pedestrianize roadways to encourage strolling and shopping.

Organizing a street fair is more elaborate than getting together with some neighbors to host a block party with a bounce house and some grills. A permit for the latter costs between $25 and $150 depending on the day, while a street fair can require several different licenses and inspections that can drive costs into the thousands.

The city requires the Northern Liberties Arts and Commerce Alliance to pay for a standard package of on-site food and safety inspections, emergency medical services, streets and sanitation services, and police for crowd and traffic control, according to nine invoices reviewed by The Inquirer.

All of that cost $10,688.15 on average in 2023, according to an Inquirer analysis. Now, an estimate for the same services for the July 23 event more than doubled, to $24,687.38, though the size and format of the Night Markets stayed about the same, said Kamihira of El Camino Real.

The city charges first shot up in 2024, jumping from about $10,400 in October 2023 to more than $22,700 for May 2024, the first Night Market of that year. The increase, Reed and Kamihira said, is largely driven by variability in the price for Philadelphia Police Department traffic controls.

In July 2024, for example, traffic control cost a little over $8,700. The same service ran the alliance over $12,400 in September 2024. The city had quoted the group over $11,600 for the July 23 event.

The rising costs of hosting a street fair in Philadelphia have nothing to do with inflation.

The city’s finance department bases the price of required services on each department’s hourly rate, Natalie Faragalli, a spokesperson for the Philadelphia Office of Special Events, said in a statement. Staffing levels are also determined by department.

“If the hourly rates increase due to negotiated contracts or cost-of-living adjustments, those changes are reflected in service costs each year,” Faragalli said.

Officers patrol the Northern Liberties Night Markets on a voluntary overtime basis, Philadelphia Police Department spokesperson Miguel Torres said in a statement, meaning that the level of policing — and how much it costs — depends on how many officers want overtime.

Philadelphia police received a 5% raise as part of their one-year contract extension that ran from July 2024 until last month. The pay increase, coupled with persistent understaffing, Torres said, is why the cost of policing events like the Night Market has increased.

“The department does not wish to be excessive nor is it our intention to create undue amounts of officers or overtime costs,” Torres wrote. “At our current staffing levels it becomes difficult staffing these events without the potential of undermining our normal day to day operations.”

Torres recommended that the Northern Liberties Arts and Commerce Alliance contract private security, work out a deal with the city on pricing, or “consider reducing the size of the footprint of the event” — measures Reed and Kamihira say the group has explored to no avail.

Kamihira said the alliance and the city brokered a deal in 2018 to keep fixed pricing with a set number of increases for the 2nd Street Festival, a solution he said the city has been unwilling to extend to the Night Markets.

“I think there is a measure of the city knowing who we are … and I think quickly deciding that they should be charging us more,” Kamihira said.

Faragalli declined to say whether the city had explored a contract with the alliance to preserve the 2nd Street Festival.

“We actively collaborate with organizers to think creatively and navigate rising costs when planning events,” she said. “We also recognize that beyond city services, the costs of event production needs like tents and other direct expenses for organizers continue to increase which can pose challenges for them.”

Even before July’s quote, the restaurateurs who run the Northern Liberties Arts and Commerce Alliance were struggling.

The group owed the city approximately $44,000 in outstanding bills for 2024’s three Night Markets, said Kamihira, and had begun reaching out to Raheem Manning, the city’s director of nighttime economy, and City Councilmember Mark Squilla — whose district includes Northern Liberties — for a Hail Mary.

“We’re not endowment. We’re just a handful of restaurant owners,” Reed said. “If we go in the red, there’s no one but us to bail us out.”

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Squilla confirmed that he worked with the alliance to persuade the city to wipe away $19,000 of debt the alliance owed in May and that the group paid the remaining balance in full. Manning said he encouraged the alliance to apply for a one-time $10,000 Philadelphia Department of Commerce Corridor Enhancement Grant in 2024, which it received.

Beyond that, Manning said, “funding for events like night markets is limited.”