DOWNTOWN BUSINESS NEEDS

2026 Arts, Beats & eats
downtown business parking & access | please read!

policies & procedures:

As the Royal Oak Downtown business community has continued to grow, the needs of new and active business have added to the demands for access and parking - while at the same time the parking assets available to us have shrunk as a result of the new construction throughout downtown. The only fair way to address the imbalance between requests and availability, is to stay true to our original mandate - to work toward lessening the festival’s impact on active business operations.

To that end, it will be imperative for businesses not active during evenings, weekends and holidays to not draw from the limited parking and pass availability crucial to the businesses operating with full staff. While requests for passes and parking may have been accommodated over the years without question, that will no longer be the case in 2026, as we’ll be closely vetting distribution of both parking and admission access during festival hours.

While our policy is adjusting this year, requests for parking and admission access will still be thoughtfully reviewed, and each element of your stated needs will be responded to.

please note when filling out the request form we’ve included with this information:

We will be conducting a solely needs-based review, based on current business activity and needs. Our goal is to address a business’ needs based upon it’s holiday weekend operation schedule, and business levels.

If your business is not active, or will not be operating during the event, we will provide for ownership access for personal or emergency access.

if your business is outside the secure perimeter of the Festival - or your business has access from an entrance outside the secured Festival border, you will not need access or parking support.

If your business is limited to standard business hours on the Friday of the Festival, with no additional holiday weekend business activity, no pass request is necessary as access is unrestricted until 5pm Friday.

All passes provided will be day-specific, with no all-weekend passes available. This is intended to simplify distribution of passes for various shifts of staff.

We thank you in advance for your understanding, and we welcome your outreach for any specific issues your business may be facing. We do ask that you consider all elements raised within the survey as early as possible, so that we may be able to provide as much support for your operations as possible.

Respectfully,

Arts, Beats & Eats