Midnight Madness cancelled

More than 40-year Oakville tradition comes to an end.

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Downtown Oakville merchants have funded the popular annual town party, which closed down our main street until the wee hours for more than 40 years, until the interruption of the pandemic.

In its early years, according to Paul Barrington whose business has operated on Lakeshore Road for 70 years, merchants would put on their pyjamas to mind their shopfronts. But this beloved Oakville tradition is coming to an end.

With the town's outstandingly successful redevelopment of downtown Lakeshore Road and changing Oakville demographics, the nature of the downtown visit has changed, says Oakville Downtown Business Improvement Association (BIA) Executive Director Adrienne Gordon.

"We have introduced so many new events that bring people to their downtown year-round," she says. "There is always something happening in downtown Oakville."

Statistics show that with the increased number of events, the number of visitors to downtown has increased compared to traffic before the pandemic or the streetscape construction. Most importantly, people are now visiting much more frequently, and coming downtown has become an experience shared by residents from all over town.

Indeed, 40 per cent of visitors come from outside Oakville to enjoy the variety of merchants and especially the restaurants, coffee shops, and sweet treat outlets that provide such an outstanding entertainment mix for families, couples and singles of all ages.

We all can agree that the BIA is having lots of success with its mission to create a "Beautiful, Vibrant and Welcoming Downtown."

Midnight Madness was an expensive event to stage and also required an enormous amount of preparation, which the local merchants all worked hard to bring off the very successful event. While some merchants are not happy with the decision, many see the new approach as a better expenditure of their promotional dollars, bringing more consistent traffic instead of taking such a large chunk of the budget for a single event.

Anyone who has visited Downtown Oakville since the redevelopment will agree that the area is much busier and a better experience. Our local merchants and service providers on downtown Lakeshore make a major contribution to a vibrant town of Oakville with their many events, from Summer Music weekends to GlowDT. 

More than 15 big events and 85-plus smaller activations support community spirit and charitable giving. They help make the downtown experience varied and worth multiple visits. There is always something different going on downtown, and it's great. 

At Oakville News, we understand the decision of the merchants through their BIA: their investment to support Downtown Oakville needs to be based on what will give the best returns. And that is good for the town too.

Nevertheless, we lament the loss of this annual town party. Midnight Madness reportedly attracted 50,000 people. In our view, this was one of the key elements which entitled Oakville to continue to view itself as a town...or as former Mayor Harry Barrett so eloquently put it, often admiringly quoted by Mayor Burton: the city that calls itself a town but acts like a village.

At Midnight Madness, you would see people you hadn't seen sometimes for years, people you were friends with when your children were little soccer players or on the same hockey team or in a Suzuki violin group together. Longtime Oakville residents rubbed shoulders with new Oakvilleans of all ages, races, religions and creeds.

It was a chance to share an experience with friends and strangers, the kind of thing that reminds us that we are a community, whatever our differences of background or ideology.

Midnight Madness was one of the few remaining such events which attracted the whole community. Oakville has seen the loss of the Waterfront Festival, which everyone looked forward to all year. Shakespeare in the Park is no more. The annual bathtub race, where all our high schools competed on our main street, has also disappeared.

Fortunately, Rotary's Oakville Family Ribfest still carries on, and Mayor Burton's picnics will go ahead again this year, as will the Canada Day party in Bronte and the Santa Claus parade (with a bigger budget).

But Midnight Madness was an all-ages town-wide party that brought us all together, closed the streets to traffic, and reminded us that Downtown Oakville is everyone's downtown, regardless of what part of our community they live in. 

Our downtown merchants did a tremendous job of organizing it, bringing terrific entertainment, great food experiences, and bargains. Many local groups had the opportunity to promote their talents. With the new sidewalks and more patios, it could only have been a better experience and even more fun.

While the consensus among the merchants is that the new approach makes more sense, some feel strongly that the end of Midnight Madness is a loss. Many also express their willingness to bring back this iconic Oakville event if it didn't consume such a disproportionate share of their entertainment budget. The BIA, too, confirmed its willingness to help facilitate the return of Midnight Madness if it were to have a financial sponsor. 

"The BIA helps to engage and facilitate sponsorships of community activations that bring value to our members and are consistent with our pillars (which include beautification, marketing, community activations and member engagement.) Thus, if a sponsor came forward to financially support and run a Midnight Madness, that could be a great proposal to bring back to the membership for consideration as a 2024 opportunity," says Gordon.

From the perspective of the merchants and our increasingly enjoyable downtown, we understand this decision. But as residents, we cannot help but mourn the loss.

Midnight Madness was a community-building event, and we think Oakville would be very appreciative and supportive if another organization were to step up and provide the financial and practical support to keep it going. 

Perhaps you know or work for an Oakville company or organization that would like to associate its name with this town tradition and revive it so that it can continue to be the exciting town-wide party that so many looked forward to for years to come. We think whoever did support its revival would gain enormous goodwill from our residents. It's a well-established event with great brand equity, and a title sponsor would get a tremendous halo effect. 

We would love to hear from you on this topic. Submit a comment or email admin@oakvillenews.org and tell us what you think.