Still alive on Broadway.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Friday's torrential downpour saddened many Eugene Celebration enthusiasts who feared that a sopping weekend could prove a fatal blow to a festival that has struggled in recent years. The celebration barely survived a near rain-out in 2004.

They needn't have worried.

Even with Friday's and Sunday's rain and unrelentingly cloudy skies , the three-day festival fared surprisingly well. Attendance more than doubled from last year's drenched event and may even have set a record for this decade.

That's a tribute to the organizers, Downtown Events Management Inc., the private nonprofit group that has run the celebration since 1998, and Big Green Events, the private firm it hired to plan and produce this year's celebration.

Big Green made a series of thoughtful, strategic adjustments that helped the festival regain its footing and focus. At the same time, it was careful to retain and refine unique features that in earlier years made the Celebration a defining and wildly popular community event.

The most important change was to condense the festival, which had sprawled out across much of downtown, to a few activity-filled blocks near Broadway and the Park Blocks. The intent, according to Big Green events owner Bob Jensen, was to "bring the critical mass together and the energy together as a whole," and the strategy was obviously a success.

The change also helped create an event that, for many fairgoers, seemed reminiscent of the celebration's friendlier, cozier early days. Instead of hiking long distances between main stages, festival-goers were able to bounce among venues with relative speed and ease. More importantly, there was a sense of- dare we use the "C" words in these polarized times? - close-knit community.

Two other changes also were helpful. The first and most important was to drop admission prices, which in recent years had crept unrealistically high. The cost of a three-day pass, for example, went from $15 to $10, while the price of single-day admission went from $10 to $6. Put it this way: When it's cool and drizzly outside and the living room couch looks like the Isle of Serenity, four or five bucks can make the difference in whether you head out to the celebration or become one with the couch.

The other change was to avoid scheduling the event on the same weekend as a University of Oregon home football game. That left the festival as the primary weekend attraction and enabled organizers to start their parade - the celebration's most beloved and bewildering event - at a later, saner hour.

All this bodes well for future celebrations. Now, organizers must resist the temptation to think Bigger and Better. This year's weatherproof success should serve as a reminder to keep future festivals similarly focused and affordable - and, whenever possible, free of moisture except, of course, for that lovely slug slime.