Carl Glassman / Tribeca Trib

A jazz orchestra and cancan dancers were among the attractions on West Broadway last year when George Forgeois brought a Bastille Day celebration to Tribeca. The city nearly quadrupled the fee for the event. “It’s just dumb,” Forgeois said. “Everybody’s for it and the city just cuts us off.”

Bastille Day came to three blocks of West Broadway last July, with dancing girls and flaming grills, lively jazz and flowing beer, and a serious pétanque tournament on sand courts laid down in the middle of the street. George Forgeois, whose restaurant Cercle Rouge occupies a central spot on the street, threw the party to celebrate his native France’s national holiday, and to jubilantly promote his restaurant.

“Everybody from the neighborhood, they all seemed to have a great day,” Forgeois said. “I didn’t make any money doing it, but it was good for exposure. Really, I just thought it was a good addition to Tribeca.”

Forgeois was all ready to do it again this July 14 until last month, when he learned that the city would be nearly quadrupling its fee for the privilege.

Forgeois said he didn’t find out about the increase for his street activity permit—from $10,000 to $38,500—until more than four months after he had submitted his application to the Office of Citywide Events Coordination and Management (CECM). Faced with either scaling down the event or asking his sponsors for more money, he decided to cancel the party.

“It just wouldn’t be as attractive to make it smaller,” Forgeois said.

“Last year, we did it the right way. It would be meaningless to do it another way.”

The city raised the street activity fees for for-profit events a few weeks after Forgeois’ 2009 application was approved. Previously, according to CECM executive director Evan Korn, there were no real guidelines for evaluating permits and assigning fees. The city simple charged a flat rate based on the type of public property—street, sidewalk, park, etc.—the activity would occupy.

Today, applicants are charged according to the amount of public space they take up, the size and number of structures they require, and other impacts on the neighborhood. According to a Mayor’s Office spokeswoman, the fees were meant to cover the average cost the city incurs for each type of street event.

Because of the number of blocks he wanted to close and tents he wanted to use, Forgeois would have been charged the maximum—$38,000, the same as the NFL’s colossal opening weekend festival that engulfed Columbus Circle last fall.

“There are lots of costs, so we had to come up with a fee scale that factored in all of these things,” Korn said. “It was created to cover the city’s spending on resources, not to make a profit.”

Forgeois still plans to host his older and larger Bastille Day fête at his Cobble Hill restaurant. That event, under the umbrella of a non-profit organization,  is not subject to the same fee hikes. But, he said, the Tribeca event was special.

“It was smaller, it was nice. It’s less work for me not to do it, sure, but it’s more of a loss for the neighborhood.”