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One of San Antonio’s longtime Fiesta neighborhood celebrations will not take place this year.
Alamo Heights Night, a family-friendly outdoor block party that has been part of the Fiesta season since 1987, has been canceled amid declining attendance and revenue.
Fiesta San Antonio Commission Executive Director Steve Rosenauer confirmed the cancellation Tuesday. The event had been scheduled for April 17.
The event is organized by the Alamo Heights Rotary Club. Club president Rick Thorp said organizers believed they had notified Fiesta officials months ago that the event would not be held this year.
“We thought we had communicated to Fiesta months ago that we couldn’t offer the event this year, but that message was somehow lost,” Thorp said.
Organizers say the decision follows several years of declining turnout and financial support. Alamo Heights Night was canceled in both 2020 and 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Fiesta itself was canceled in 2020 and postponed until the summer of 2021. According to the Rotary Club, attendance and revenue have struggled to rebound since the event returned.
Club leaders said last year’s event did not generate enough revenue to finance the event this year.
Alamo Heights Night began in 1987 and became an official Fiesta San Antonio event in 2014. The Alamo Heights Rotary Club originally organized the celebration as a neighborhood-style block party. As the event grew in popularity, it outgrew its earlier location near the Alamo Heights city pool and moved in 2010 to the University of the Incarnate Word campus to accommodate larger crowds.
In a statement, the Rotary Club said the celebration had reached a point where it was barely breaking even financially, limiting the group’s ability to raise money for charitable causes in the community.
Over the years, Alamo Heights Night has raised more than $2.4 million for charities and community projects through the Rotary Club.
Fiesta San Antonio includes more than 100 official events each spring, many organized by nonprofit groups that rely on the celebrations as major fundraisers.
