Naples loses a February event that drew 15,000 paying visitors to Fifth Avenue South, and Collier County is now courting it

The car show that has closed Fifth Avenue South to traffic for most of the last two decades will not apply to return there next year, and Collier County is trying to keep it inside the county.

Harriet Howard Heithaus reported for Gulfshore Business on Wednesday that the Collier County Board of County Commissioners discussed the matter at its July 28 meeting. Commissioner Rick LoCastro told the board he had contacted Tom O'Riordan, the show's local organiser, after learning the city of Naples had denied its permit, and said county staff were working through possible venues that would be presented, in his words, in short order. LoCastro said the decision on where the show goes belongs to the organisation and not to the county, and that the county's role is to set out what the options would cost and what they would require.

The scale is what makes this a money story rather than an events-calendar item.

According to Gulfshore's reporting, Cars on 5th has been in the area since 2003 and on Fifth Avenue South for 21 of its 23 years, and in a normal year it brought about 15,000 paying visitors to see more than 700 cars. The same reporting describes a persistent problem with people entering without tickets, swelling the crowd by as many as 7,000 and parking illegally, and notes that the show has offered a free shuttle from the Collier County Government Center parking lot.

The city's proposed answer was a cap. O'Riordan told Gulfshore Business that Naples proposed restricting admission to 3,500, which is close to a fifth of the usual gate, and that the cap would not address the illegal parking or the gaps in the barricades that let people in, while cutting revenue below the point at which the show breaks even. He said the city has been silent since he turned the proposal down.

On where it goes next, O'Riordan told Gulfshore Business that requests for proposals are out to five cities and venues out of 33 that have approached the show, that a new show is being planned for the Tampa and St. Petersburg area, and that a show will still take place in Southwest Florida on February 6. LoCastro said he expected movement within about two weeks.

No primary document is linked to this brief, and that absence is deliberate rather than an oversight. The Collier County meeting portal at colliercountyfl.iqm2.com loads its meeting list through a script and returned no record for the July 28 board meeting to the tools used here, and the county website at colliercountyfl.gov refused the request. This publication has not read the county's own minutes or agenda for that meeting, has not obtained the city of Naples permit file or the conditions attached to it, and has not spoken to the city, the county or the organisers. Everything above is Heithaus's reporting of a public meeting and of correspondence with the organiser, and it is credited to her and to Gulfshore Business.

Two things this brief does not say should be said explicitly. It does not report why the city set the conditions it set, because no city official is quoted on that in the reporting available here and motive is not something to infer. And it does not put a dollar figure on the economic impact of the show, because no study or county estimate has been obtained, and a number invented for the shape of the sentence would be worse than no number at all.

The original reporting is at gulfshorebusiness.com (subscription).