Last Thursday: Is this the last one?

Last Thursday brings thousands of people to Northeast Alberta Street every month in the summer. It also brings headaches for city leaders and nearby residents.

(Allison Milligan/The Oregonian)

Three months after the city took over

, Mayor Charlie Hales wants to give it up again.

waded into a long-running debate over how to manage Portland's signature street festival when he took office this year. He hoped to balance competing demands from neighbors, artists and businesses when he ruled the unregulated event must apply for a permit for the first time in its 16-year history.

Instead, frustrated with city demands,

that ran Last Thursday quit a month into festival season, leaving the mayor holding the reins.

Hales and his staff say they had some success this summer. They ended the party earlier and cut down on garbage left behind.

But as Last Thursday ends its 2013 run tonight, its future is again unclear. Hales and his staff say taxpayers cannot continue to run it. Public support for Last Thursday costs too much, and isn't fair to other neighborhoods.

"City government is not in the business of managing street fairs," said Chad Stover, the city policy assistant who manages Last Thursday.

A group of Northeast Alberta Street artists created Last Thursday in 1997 as an alternative to The Pearl's tonier

. Those were the days before urban renewal transformed northeast Portland. Vendors at early Last Thursdays paid no fees and set up anywhere they wanted. Cleanup was left to volunteers.

Last Thursday: Want to go?

Where: NE Alberta Street will be closed to cars between NE 15th Avenue and NE 30th Avenue.

When: Today, 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.

What: Party and artwalk.

Cost: Free.

The event soon brought between 15,000 and 20,000 visitors a month to revitalized Alberta. Communities from North Portland's Kenton neighborhood to downtown Hillsboro tried to replicate its success.

But the lack of leadership that made Last Thursday popular with artists also created tension. By 2010, the art walk had become an all-night party spilling from Alberta, a busy commercial strip, into quieter residential streets. Neighbors said they often found people urinating or defecating in their yards and cars double parked or blocking driveways. They begged city leaders for help.

Starting in 2009, the city pitched in between $80,000 and $110,000 a summer to pay for security and cleanup. City leaders considered canceling or curtailing the event. Hoping to save Last Thursday, a few artists and residents formed the Friends of Last Thursday and promised to cover event costs and security by 2012.

They quickly realized the challenge was too big for a small, loosely organized group of volunteers to fix in only a year, said Maquette Reeverts Gann, a resident, artist and Alberta Street gallery owner who helped run the Friends.

"We were given no tools, no backing and no support," Gann said. "The city helped create this problem by letting it go so long and then dumping it on our laps."

Still, the Friends made progress, Gann said. The city wanted a database of vendors, so they made one. They charged non-art vendors a fee, which helped pay for street barriers, a dozen portable toilets and trash and recycling pick-up.

Neighbors still complained. When Charlie Hales became mayor this year, he ruled Last Thursday needed a city permit. He asked the Friends to bring in more volunteers and 80 portable toilets. He said Last Thursday, which starts at 6 p.m. at NE 15th Avenue, must end by 9 p.m. and suggested trimming the number of city blocks closed each month.

Negotiations between the city and Friends of Last Thursday fell apart days before June's festival.

This summer, the city-run Last Thursdays began with a huddle of bureaucrats, police and volunteers at the Portland Police Bureau's North Precinct. They ended with a street cleaning parade. For the first time ever, the city also sent volunteers to document "livability incidents."

They recorded about 200 a month. Other problems continue as well: The city added some portable toilets, yet couldn't afford 80. At the August artwalk, police arrested two men on accusations of assaulting a resident who had their car towed from in front of his driveway.

"It's been a long summer for all of us," Stover said.

Five city bureaus worked on Last Thursday this year, and city leaders haven't added up how much their efforts will end up costing taxpayers, Stover said. But he said the city can't funnel so much time and money into any single street fair, no matter its prominence.

Gann, the Friends volunteer, said that without the responsibility of helping manage Last Thursday, she had more time to spend on her fire-based performances. She doesn't want to give up on the event, though, and will work with other artists this winter to create a nonprofit to manage the festival. They plan to apply for a permit next year, she said.

That might not go over well at City Hall. Hales spokesman Dana Haynes said he isn't sure Friends of Last Thursday is the right organization to lead the artwalk. The artists offered to re-take responsibility for Last Thursday a month after quitting this summer if the city chipped in $4,000.

"That didn't seem like a good investment," Haynes said.

The city is willing to lend a financial hand to another group, say Alberta Street business owners or the nonprofit Northeast Coalition of Neigbors, Haynes said. But so far, no one else has stepped up to take Last Thursday off the mayor's hands.

- Casey Parks