Drinking beer in a Cleveland Park on a Friday evening was once legal?

It was a perfect dreary morning for starting to begin reading through the ridiculously large pile of books that has accumulated near the living room chair (Not to be confused with the gigantic pile of unread books in the office. These take precedent, they are from the library). I thought I would start out with the smallest of the bunch, a softcover book published by the American Planning Association and written by Project for Public Spaces entitled Managing Downtown Public Spaces.

More of a manual to running various urban planning exercises then a book on urban theory there were still plenty of case studies and interesting stories (and images) supplied including references to one of the few movies I remembered sitting through in college called The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces which, regardless of the quality of video and era in which it was shot, is still a surprisingly relevant and humanistic approach to looking at shared public/private space.

I am not posting to bemoan Managing Downtown Public Spaces, I'm not, it was a quick read and actually gave me something to ponder, I am posting because Cleveland (I can only assume Ohio) was used as a case study of successful urban spaces multiple times, most noticeably referring a regularly planned public event that actually made more money then it cost to put on. Yup, an actual income generating event that the city had hosted to bring people downtown.

I haven't been able to find any information online in regards to this event. Supposedly it was hosted by the Greater Cleveland Growth Association (who has recently merged with the Greater Cleveland Partnership and took place every Friday during the summer between the hours of 5pm and 8pm, each time in a different section of town, with the idea to keep people downtown after work and expose them to businesses or parts of the city they "normally wouldn't see".

It was called "Party in the Park" and was started in 1969 (or so I can surmise). It was self supporting and in 1979 grossed a profit of $6000 according to PPS which was distributed to the non-profit organizations that volunteered services.

I just was wondering what had happened to it. I almost remember hearing about the event and am sort of sad that it either a) went away or b) doesn't advertise enough for me to know about it.