DowntownDC BID and Penn Quarter Neighborhood Association Plan Arts on Foot Reconfiguration

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Sun. June 10, 2012

WASHINGTON, DC – The Pennsylvania Quarter Neighborhood Association and the DowntownDC Business Improvement District (BID) are excited to announce a joint, one-year planning program to reconfigure and expand Arts on Foot, the annual fall festival that debuts the performing and visual arts season in Downtown’s Penn Quarter.  The BID and Penn Quarter Neighborhood Association will partner with performing and visual arts participants whose vision and imagination will bring unprecedented vitality and energy to this endeavor.

“We look forward to returning with a fall 2013 program that showcases Downtown as the premier location for visual and performing arts and culture in the Washington region,” said Richard H. Bradley, executive director of the DowntownDC BID.  “The BID and Penn Quarter Neighborhood Association will be working with our colleagues at the museums, theaters, and other arts presenters – both large and small – to design an event that will leave no doubt about Downtown’s rich cultural resources available throughout the year.”

Jo-Ann Neuhaus, executive director of the Pennsylvania Quarter Neighborhood Association, was instrumental in a collaborative effort that created Arts on Foot nearly 20 years ago.  “In 1993 Michael Kahn said ‘Do something so people will know we are here,’ referring to the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s move from the Folger to The Lansburgh Theater.  We thought what better way to do this than to introduce the region to the burgeoning arts community that had settled into Penn Quarter.  We knew nothing about arts festivals and later found out we were innovators–our theaters had open rehearsals, and we invited people into the many artist studios in the neighborhood,” said Neuhaus.   “Our goal is to again be innovators 20 years later!  Penn Quarter has matured and so have the arts that are now here.  We are going to knock the socks off people with a reconfigured Arts on Foot, but that takes time to put together.”

According to the DowntownDC BID’s 2011 State of Downtown report, the number of visitors to Downtown has increased by 132 percent over the past decade, and the number of workers and residents have increased by 34 percent and 73 percent, respectively, with much of the growth occurring in the Penn Quarter neighborhood.  In addition, the number of restaurants has increased by 57 percent over that time, while the number of weekday exits from the Gallery Place-Chinatown Metrorail station—the nearest stop to Arts on Foot—has increased by 93 percent.

Downtown’s completion of the huge, mixed-use CityCenterDC development—with 2.5 million square feet of office space, residences, a hotel, shops, and restaurants when completed at the former Convention Center site—and the 1,175-room Marriott Marquis convention center headquarters hotel, will be the capstone on a 35-year storybook revival of Washington’s award winning, mixed-use Downtown.

“Building on the legacy that the Penn Quarter Neighborhood Association and its partners created as Downtown and Arts on Foot evolved, all of us working on this want to create a fall event that kicks off the arts and cultural season similar to the way the National Cherry Blossom Festival signifies the arrival of spring,” Bradley noted.

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