Organizers of the four Car-Free Vancouver Day festivals that will happen across the city on Sunday (June 15) might think the concept is red hot, but they’ve received a lukewarm response from some business associations.

Lyn Hellyar, executive director of the West End Business Improvement Association, told the Georgia Straight she has familial obligations and her assistant will be out of town when the West End Car-Free Festival sets up from noon to 6 p.m. along Denman Street on Sunday. She added that her BIA wrote a letter of support for the festival but made no financial contribution and had “not done a lot of consultation with stakeholders”.

“They [festival organizers] wanted us to put up a booth,” Hellyar said by phone. “But I have nobody to send to take a booth.”¦And I told them we are not in favour of having the car-free festival one week after the 2008 BG World Cup Triathlon Championships [June 5 to 8]. We had that date for two years.”

West End event volunteer Ashley Webster sounded unimpressed.

“I have had no personal contact with them and have never met them personally,” Webster told the Straight by phone. “Her reason [for not supporting the June 15 street closure] sounds like a good reason in concept, but I don’t understand it. The foot traffic benefits the businesses on that day.”

In 2005, Grandview-Woodland residents Matt Hern and Carmen Mills founded the Car-Free Commercial Drive Festival (also happening noon to 6 p.m.). The event’s success led to a citywide version this year, which includes the West End, Main Street, and Commercial Drive festivals, as well as 20 block parties in Kitsilano.

However, Hern told the Straight their relationship with the Commercial Drive Business Society has always been uneasy, in part because “they don’t like the car-free stuff and they don’t like the anticorporate stuff”.

“They said that repeatedly and explicitly,” Hern said by phone. “They tried to get us to call it ”˜Commercial Drive Days’. They tried to get us to have a whole bunch of electric-car and hybrid-car displays. They tried to get us to get the anticorporate stuff off. And we just said ”˜No.’ ”

Commercial Drive Business Society executive director Michelle Barile told the Straight that her association also penned a letter of support and that it will “have a couple of tables at the event and we will be selling banner bags”.

“It is a great program,” she said by phone. “We have recycled our street banners into nylon shopping bags, and all proceeds are going towards public green space in the community.”

Hern said he is not buying it.

“When she [Barile] says ”˜totally support’, what does she mean?” he said. “It is not like they are giving any money. When they say support, they mean ”˜not actively trying to block’. They definitely tried to actively block it in past years, and they failed. This year, I just think they are doing what their members want, which is to be quiet and rake in all the money when it comes in.”

Billy Collins, co-organizer of the Main Street Car-Free Festival—happening from 4 to 10 p.m. between 12th and 16th avenues—told the Straight he has had a different experience dealing with the Mount Pleasant Commercial Improvement Society.

“We have been working quite closely with them, actually, and they have been quite supportive,” Collins said by phone. “They have donated $1,000 to the cause.”¦And they are happy to have us. One of the objectives right from the start was to make sure that the business owners and the merchants along the closure were supportive of what we are doing, and then we are supportive of them.”

More information about the festivals is available at www.carfreevancouver.org/ .