For more than a decade, thousands of people have packed Chinatown International District’s streets to enjoy pork belly skewers and BBQ spring rolls, watch lion dance performers and peruse vendor booths at the annual fall CID Night Market. This year will likely be much quieter.
The Chinatown-International District Business Improvement Area, a neighborhood nonprofit that organizes the event, announced the night market’s indefinite cancellation last month, citing a lack of sponsors and rising costs. It had been scheduled for today.
Staff at Crawfish King, a Vietnamese-Cajun seafood restaurant in the CID and a longtime market vendor, said they are devastated that the market was canceled.
“I was truly heartbroken,” said Truong Nguyen, marketing manager of Crawfish King. The CID “has been getting blows left and right, and this is like a knockout.”
Community members and local business owners say they will miss the event, which began in 2006, that marked the end of summer and celebrated Asian culture, food and community, particularly amid a year of ongoing concerns of safety, drug use, economic development and disputes over the placement of a new light-rail stop. The night market’s cancellation also comes at a time when local business owners didn’t see the boost they hoped for in sales and foot traffic during this summer’s MLB All-Star weekend and Taylor Swift concerts.
Monisha Singh, CIDBIA executive director, said the nonprofit hopes to revive the CID Night Market when the organization is in a better financial position and can sustainably fund the event. Singh said the organization needed at least $50,000 in sponsorships to run the CID Night Market this year. Singh said sponsorships declined across all its events since the pandemic began in 2020.
“We’re just not able to break even at this point,” Singh said.
In 2021, the CIDBIA declared nearly $854,000 in revenue, according to its 990 tax filing. The bulk of that money came from COVID-19 relief funding, which has since been exhausted, Singh said.
The market and other CIDBIA events like Dragon Fest and the Lunar New Year Celebration are designed to be fundraisers for the nonprofit, which pays for various programs, including neighborhood trash pickup and graffiti removal, public safety outreach, and education and marketing for small businesses in the area. Singh said, however, that the nonprofit “never really made money on [the events] because they’re just so expensive to produce.”
Three events — the night market, Dragon Fest and Lunar New Year — cost more than $41,000 to produce, but earned the organization just over $7,000 in net revenue, according to the nonprofit’s 2021 tax filing. The nonprofit’s representatives declined to disclose the specific cost of last year’s CID Night Market event.
Earlier this summer, Singh said, the CIDBIA leadership realized they didn’t have the staffing capacity and money to run this year’s event. Last year, the CIDBIA had four employees, including one dedicated to managing events such as the CID Night Market. That staff member has since left the CIDBIA for a job opportunity.
The CIDBIA notified vendors of the event’s cancellation in July, Singh said. But, in the wake of the announcement, some residents and business owners said they were unaware of the looming financial threats to the event’s future and shocked that there was little opportunity to share concerns.
Tanya Woo, a dancer at the CID Night Market since 2020, said some residents wanted to fundraise to save the market but felt like they didn’t have the chance without communication from the CIDBIA. (Woo is also running to represent Seattle City Council District 2, which includes the Chinatown International District, against incumbent Tammy Morales.)
“If we had known that this festival was at risk for cancellation, I think people would have come out of the woodwork to help and to make sure that it was put on and stayed strong,” Woo said.
The CIDBIA said they appreciate the outpouring of support from the community, including calls to fundraise. However, they said the event requires more long-term financial backing to continue.
“People’s hearts are in the right place,” Singh said, but “last-minute fundraising isn’t sustainable.”
Evelyn Chow, a spokesperson for Councilmember Morales, said team members are disappointed that the event is canceled, but would contact the CIDBIA to assess the gap in resources and support the event’s return.
Jay Yanamura, a longtime CID resident and attendee of the market, said the event is critical for small-business owners because “they need all the help they can get.”
In May, the neighborhood was listed among the “most endangered” historic places by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
Nguyen of Crawfish King said night market revenue is a boon for the restaurant as it prepares for a slower winter business season.
In an email, Singh said the CIDBIA has “cut or reduced a lot of [night market] expenses from pre-pandemic, so our budget is as trim as it could be.” The CIDBIA collects less revenue from businesses than most other neighborhood business improvement areas in Seattle, according to the 2019 Seattle Business Improvement Areas report.
The CIDBIA, which was established in 1994, had a business improvement area assessment budget of $176,000 in 2018; neighborhoods like Pioneer Square, Ballard and University District had funds ranging from over $400,000 to about $918,000, according to the 2019 report.
“We’re operating on rates that are very old and outdated … to meet the demands of this neighborhood,” Singh said.
Because of neighborhood street closures, a lack of parking and increased trash during the CID Night Market, Singh said the “spike in business is not distributed equitably across the neighborhood,” particularly for shops without booths at the market.
More than a decade of culture
Night markets are popular in Asia and in Chinatowns throughout the U.S. for their delicious street foods and lively atmosphere. Seattle’s night market was a community effort started by students at Wilderness Inner-City Leadership Development in collaboration with the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, the CIDBIA and the Community Action Program.
The organizations aimed to reactivate park space by bringing people together to socialize in the neighborhood after dark, said Jeff Hou, a professor of landscape architecture at the University of Washington.
“The night market has been important in bringing the larger public, people from other neighborhoods around the city, to the CID,” Hou said, to “really experience the unique culture in the neighborhood.”
That summer, hundreds of people gathered at Hing Hay Park for an all-ages karaoke contest, and played the ancient board game Go, mahjong and chess. Lion dancers performed in the park while residents gave martial art and cooking lessons to event attendees.
The CID Night Market is also an opportunity for small business owners to promote themselves.
Chinese American fiber artist and night market vendor Genna Fong of Exquisite Knots said her crochet work of bamboo plants and fortune cookies are adored at the market in the CID.
“I really love meeting people who appreciate my craft,” Fong said. “People go to the event expecting to see Asian artists and their works and that is part of what makes it a more comfortable environment.”
Without events like the CID Night Market, Hou said there’s less room for small businesses to innovate and, “one less opportunity for these kinds of intercultural experiences to happen.”
Today, there are several night markets throughout Seattle, including in Columbia City and South Lake Union. Though the CID Night Market was smaller when compared to the Richmond Night Market in British Columbia, known as the biggest Asian-inspired night market in North America, many residents said the market was a point of pride in the community.
“We were hoping that the night market would get bigger and bigger every year,” Yanamura said. “We were hoping that the Seattle one would grow over time, but it looks like maybe it’s going in the wrong direction.”
Nguyen of Crawfish King said staffers enjoyed hanging out with local business owners at the night market, and said they are still feeling its absence.
“This is our chance to show our foods and bring in new customers. Without the customers coming in, that’s a huge financial loss,” Nguyen said. “Events like this need to happen to preserve culture. When blows like this happen, it just puts a hole in our hearts.”
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