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Blink Brings Estimated One Million People To Downtown Cincinnati

Bill Rinehart
/
WVXU
The Contemporary Arts Center was one of 22 projection sites in the first Blink festival.

It was over in a blink of an eye. The community art and light festival, Blink, brought in an estimated one million people to downtown Cincinnati during the weekend.

The four-day light festival drew in crowds bigger than Riverfest, Taste of Cincinnati and Oktoberfest. It featured large-scale light mapping, murals, urban artscapes, and interactive art and music stretching across from the Banks to Findlay market.

Rich Walburg, communications director for Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber, said from the beginning it was important to make Blink free and open to the public. "We had small children, senior citizens, we had different races, different cultures, neighborhoods, regions, coming across bridges across the nation to join here in Cincinnati and have a good time at Blink," Walburg says.

Cincinnati Metro says in a release there were nearly 27,000 trips taken on the Cincinnati Bell Connector streetcar during the weekend. The busiest day was Saturday, when the streetcar had more than 9,000 passenger trips.

Beyond traffic and sidewalk issues, Walburg says there were no major incidents and organizers are already talking about hosting Blink again.

"There's tremendous pressure to repeat Blink in 2018 and going into the future," Walburg says. "The Cincinnati Chamber and the Haile Foundation will be meeting over the next few weeks to determine if and when Blink will return."