Port beer garden tapped out

What has traditionally been the start of Port Washington’s summer beer garden season events— the Be3 Father’s Day beer garden — will be held on Sunday, but it will be one of only a few such events held this year.

The beer garden events, held on Saturdays throughout the summer in Upper Lake Park since 2014, have been coordinated by the Friends of Port Washington Parks and Recreation and staffed by civic groups for the past several years, but this year the Friends group is putting its steins in the cupboard.

The number of beer garden events has been decreasing, from 16 during a summer to just seven last year — and one of those had to be canceled when the hosting civic organization pulled out two weeks before the event, Wendy Braam, vice president of the Friends group, said.

The reasons are myriad but familiar, she said.

“There are fewer civic groups that have people to staff the beer gardens,” Braam said. “Volunteerism is dropping rapidly. It would take a huge group of people to manage a beer garden to have it go even for six weeks.

“There’s more competition, more events happening that draw people, and the cost of holding a beer garden is rising.”

The cost of renting out the city’s beer garden increased from $50 originally to $325 today, Braam said, and insurance for the beer gardens has increased significantly as well, from about $700 to $1,200.

Through the years, she said, the number of civic groups participating in the beer gardens has decreased significantly, in part because the profit they realize decreased as well.

In fact, she said, the Friends group, which consists of only four members, ended last year’s beer garden series with a deficit. It is hoping to make that up during a beer garden held in conjunction with the city’s Fourth of July activities, but will hold the event in Veterans Memorial Park rather than the beer garden.

The Friends group announced earlier this year it would not sponsor the beer gardens, paving the way for the civic groups to organize them on their own, but few have stepped up to do that, Braam said.

“There is a way forward,” she said. “We’re a group that tried really hard. If a group wants to get together and work on it, we’re open to it. We just have to get people to do it together and the city to get behind it.”

The Be3 beer garden event will be held from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sunday, June 21. A stein holding competition will be held at 3 p.m. and there will be live music throughout the event, including Jesse Voelker from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and Black Tie Bandits from 3:30 to 7 p.m.