If attendance is any sign, Tacoma’s family-friendly, alcohol-free New Year’s Eve festival, First Night, has definitely returned, and with a promise of many more such nights to come. According to Lori Crace, an event coordinator for Metroparks who was “loaned” to the First Night board for this season’s festival, estimates for the turnout start at around 10,000 â€" “and that’s very conservative,” Crace says. Sound Transit’s downtown Link street car service, which delivered trainloads of festival-goers to the First Night site, had its Automatic People Counter go down when the number was nearing 7,000.  Alicia Lawver, First Night secretary, says Sound Transit estimates the total ridership at more than 7,000, which would make First Night the second-highest ridership-drawing event. Tall Ships is number one with around 9,000 riders per day.

Crace saw those loads of passengers debarking for the festival. “It looked like a subway train in Rome,” she recalls.

First Night hadn’t been filling the streets of downtown Tacoma for a while before last week’s 2007-2008 return. After 2004’s financial meltdown, the event went dark, recalls this year’s board chair, Bennett Thurmon, whose own festival history began when he first volunteered in 1995.

But a few members of the First Night board “stuck it out,” and began planning a comeback for 2007-2008. Thurmon, who joined the board for the renewed effort, became its chair in September.

The new board was determined to avoid the indebtedness that sank the festival in 2004, Thurmon explains. “We made a concerted effort to stay fiscally sound.”

And it worked. With discipline, and with the help of contributors who gave both cash and in-kind support, it soon became clear that the First Night budget was back on track.

Among the in-kind contributors was Metro Parks Tacoma, which loaned several staffers to this season’s project to do entertainment programming, publicity and maintenance. Lori Crace was among the human resources donated to help make the new First Night a success.

“I was a loaned executive,” Crace explains.

Not that she’s complaining. “I love doing festivals. I love seeing two or more generations of a family enjoying the same thing … (such experiences) provide spectacular little snapshots that become a part of a family’s history.”

But the 2007-2008 First Night festival was important to a somewhat larger family too. “I saw how much the community wanted this festival to come back,” Crace says.
Thurmon agrees. The community, he says, “seemed anxious and eager” for the return of First Night.

That eagerness translated into large numbers of festival-goers. Multiple performance venues actually had to turn people away, Thurmon reports.

Crace admits that she had been concerned whether the crowds would return to First Night. “It was a little scary,” she says. “We wondered, did we get the word out.”

Yep. It looks like they got the word out. â€" Bill Timnick