Do you love Street Fairs/Festivals? Do you love getting the traditional Festival foods or getting a chance to try something new? Do you love buying unique and cool crafts while hanging out with friends? Don't you just love it when you go outside and stumble across an NYC Fair/Festival?

Well that could all change!

The Street Activity Permit Office and The Mayor's Office of The City of New York has made proposals that will negatively impact The Forest Hills Chamber of Commerce and similar organizations, which hosts Street Fairs and Festivals. 

Among the many proposed changes, the ones specifically of great concern to the sponsoring organizations include:

• The limitation to 100 Street Festivals with in the Borough of Manhattan and the limitation to 100 Street Festivals to the other 4 Buroughs combined. Manhattan will be allowed 4 times the events than all the other Borough.
• The proposed rule requires that 50% of the participating vendors have a business or local presence with in the community board where the Festivals occur. The rules as proposed will disqualify nearly all groups sponsoring street festivals and will result in denial for conducting their events, as they will not reach the 50% participation.
• Sponsors will be allowed to only conduct one festival per year. This will crush the sponsoring groups. The unrestricted revenue used for vital services, community building and economic development received from sponsoring Street Festivals would be significantly reduced forcing many community organizations to close their doors. The Forest Hills Chamber of Commerce has two Street Festivals per with tens of thousands of attendees. 

Street festivals serve as an economic catalyst for local businesses, startup companies, craft vendors and even the large corporate companies that sponsor the Street Festivals. Street Festivals highlight the diverse communities and cultures through out the city.

Therefore Street Festivals should be encouraged with out new restrictions or new limitations designed to suppress these community events. Please help us keep the Fairs/Festivals alive!