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Tulsa’s Blue Dome Arts Festival ends after 15 years

TULSA — Ironically, the 2018 edition of the Blue Dome Arts Festival was the largest, best-attended, and by all accounts most successful in the event’s 15-year run.

But when Jo and Chris Armstrong saw the sign go up that Santa Fe Square has begun leasing spaces, they knew that was the last nail in the coffin.

"That's great for Tulsa, it's great for the Blue Dome District.  As a business owner down here, it'll be great for our business, I'm certain of that. For the festival, it means more construction," Jo Armstrong told KRMG Friday.

More construction, and less space. The hotel which just opened nearby would have closed off a quarter of the space the BDAF once had.

And while the Armstrongs considered moving the festival, they decided it just wouldn’t feel right.

“If we move it, it’s just not the same. It’s not the Blue Dome Arts Festival. It’s more than the fact that we use the Blue Dome as our office. It’s that it’s this iconic landmark that is the heart of the festival, and it’s important to be near it. We could shrink the festival down and do things very, very differently, but unfortunately still yet the festival is diminished, and it’s only going to get more and more so while this stuff is happening for now, until new things can be figured out... potentially... maybe.”

Another complication is the state’s new liquor laws, which no longer allow for “low-point” beer consumers to leave the premises from which it was purchased.

That means they would have had to fence in the entire festival, at great cost, and face fines for every individual citation issued.

She says while she knows closing the festival is the right decision, that doesn’t make it any easier.

“This has been a hard day,” she said. “I’m not gonna lie.”

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