The City of Minneapolis is looking for new event organizers for its Open Streets program.

This comes after the city ended its contract with the nonprofit Our Streets, which has put together these popular street fairs for more than a decade.

The city plans to host five different Open Streets events at various locations across Minneapolis in 2024.

José Antonio Zayas Cabán, the executive director of Our Streets, tells 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS that he has concerns about the direction of the program.

“It will probably impact the quality of the event,” he said.

Our Streets founded Open Streets in 2011 and helped organize the last 12 years of programming. Cabán says when Our Streets submitted its budget request of just over $800,000 for this year, the city decided to open it up to new organizers.

“All we did at that point was share with them a budget because the event program has started to become unsustainable so we were disappointed about their reaction,” Cabán said.

The five Open Streets events are scheduled to take place at:

• West Broadway, from Lyndale Avenue North to Penn Avenue North
• Lyndale Avenue South, from West 22nd Street to West 42nd Street
• Northeast, along portions of Central Avenue Northeast
• Franklin Avenue, from Portland and Park Avenues to 26th Avenue South
• Nicollet Avenue, from 31st Street to 46th Street

Each event has a budget of no more than $50,000.

“I think what we sent was pretty accurate. It’s based on 12 years of experience that we’ve had doing it before,” Cabán said. “We’re just trying to make sure that the event program is still high-quality and sustainable over the long term.”

“We’re so excited to bring the 2024 Open Streets event series to the next level,” Minneapolis City Operations Officer Margaret Anderson Kelliher said. “Open Streets are much beloved community-building events and a source of pride for so many in Minneapolis. We look forward to partnering with community organizations to carry on this tradition. We are hopeful that each of these events can really capture the flavor and spirit of our city’s unique neighborhoods.”

“We want the city of Minneapolis to take our expertise into consideration moving forward,” Cabán said.

Our Streets is planning to apply to be an organizer but also wants to advocate for more money because they know the resources it’ll take to make this a success.

“It’s just a big undertaking and not a lot of organizations are necessarily willing or able to do it for that little amount of money or they don’t necessarily have the staff to do it,” Cabán said.

Anyone interested in hosting one of these Open Streets events must submit an application to the city by Feb. 15.

The dates for all five events are still to be determined.