No More Umbrella Sky?
MERCHANTS AND CIVIC LEADERS WANT THE RAINBOW TO CONTINUE
Before the July installation of the Umbrella Sky, an average of 2,000 to 2,400 pedestrians traversed downtown’s Giralda Plaza each day. Since Umbrella Sky – an overhead installation of more than 700 multi-colored umbrellas – that number has grown to a daily average of between 9,400 and 12,600. Th is a 300 to 400 per- cent increase, virtually overnight.
Umbrella Sky, Giralda Plaza
These and other amazing facts were recently compiled in a report by Belkys Perez, Coral Gables’ marketing and events specialist who works for the city’s Economic Development Department. Another fact: Social and traditional media coverage of the event created more than 131 million impressions. The result? Merchants who had endured the Street Scape project to make Giralda a pedestrian mall have been rewarded with a big jump in business. “The smiles on people’s faces, the transmissions on social media, and the fact that people are coming there and helping out the restaurants and merchants has made the long wait worthwhile,” says City Manager Cathy Swanson-Rivenbark.
Business proprietors on Giralda Plaza could not agree more. “The Umbrella Sky has been an incredible success. People have come from all over,” says Nick Sharp, owner of the ThreeFold Café. “The summer was horrible, pre-summer. Now it’s getting busier and busier.”
Nonetheless, Umbrella Sky’s days are numbered. “The response to the umbrella project, a collaborative effort with the Coral Gables Foundation, the BID [Business Improvement District] and the city, has been nothing short of amazing,” says Swanson-Rivenbark. “But the umbrellas are scheduled to come down on the 17th [of September].”
Just what – if anything – will replace them is an urgent concern for Giralda merchants, who now date their sales figures B.U and A.U. – Be- fore the Umbrellas and After the Umbrellas. Venny Torre, president of the BID, suggests keeping the umbrellas in place, but changing their colors with the seasons. Other BID board members think they should be replaced with anything from beach balls to kites to canvas sails. As BID board member and City Commissioner Michael Mena puts it, “I don’t want to bring it down until we have something to replace it… the shade aspect alone has been fantastic.”
In Perez’s presentation, alternate imagery of other hanging installations range from silver plastic squares to long strips of colored cloth to hanging swings. But just what’s next is anybody’s guess.
