Clenece Hills likes to imagine Lawrence residents gathering each year at Sesquicentennial Point to celebrate the city’s birthday and watch what she calls “Art in the Air.”

Hot air balloons would gracefully float over the point with the waters of Clinton Lake as a backdrop. Kites, flags and anything else that can be enhanced by the nearly constant wind of the point would be there, too.

“It could just be a spectacularly beautiful and unique event,” Hills said.

That’s her idea for a Lawrence celebration. Now she wants to hear yours.

Hills is trying to build momentum with elected officials and community leaders to create some sort of annual celebration that captures the attention of Lawrence residents.

Lawrence resident Clenece Hills, who led many of the city's efforts to celebrate its sesquicentennial in 2004, is advocating an annual weeklong celebration of Lawrence's birthday. Hills thinks that Sesquicentennial Point and the surrounding area would provide a great atmosphere for events that bring people together, such those pictured at top right and below.

“Downtown Manhattan (Kansas) has done that with New Year’s Eve,” Hills said of the celebration that mimics the larger celebration in the Big Apple. “It just kills me that Manhattan got on CNN and we didn’t.”

Hills said she wasn’t “locked into” any specific idea. She said something around the city’s birthday in mid-September could be nice because there are already several events during that time, including the Haskell Indian Art Market, Fall Arts and Crafts Show and speeches at the Dole Institute of Politics as part of the events surrounding its Dole Leadership Prize.

Hills said events like those – and perhaps a new “marquee” event – could be packaged together and marketed to form a communitywide, weeklong celebration.

• 6News video: Weeklong city celebration proposed
• Lawrence’s Sesquicentennial

“There is nothing that makes you feel more a part of a community than becoming involved in it in some special way,” said Hills, who led many of the city’s efforts to celebrate its sesquicentennial in 2004. “I would just like the community once a year to call special attention to everything that makes this place special.”

Lu Zimmer, Tecumseh, performs during the hammered dulcimer competition at South Park during the Kansas State Fiddling and Picking Championships in 2004.

Other community leaders are intrigued. Judy Billings, director of the Lawrence Convention and Visitors Bureau, said other communities had found major success with events. An arts show in Ann Arbor, Mich., draws more than 100,000 people and the South by Southwest music and film festival attracts thousands each March to Austin, Texas. Even on a smaller scale, area communities like Baldwin and Lecompton both have events – the Maple Leaf Festival and Territorial Days – that serve as communitywide celebrations.

“Having a major event that your entire population identifies with and that outside people would be interested in would be good,” Billings said. “But everybody needs to understand that it is a major, major undertaking.”

Billings was among a group of people in the early 1980s who put together Independence Days, a two-day Lawrence festival that featured music, food and crafts. After about five years, the event faded away.

“You have to have something that is sustainable,” Billings said. “Something as major as Clenece is talking about needs somebody thinking about it or working on it in one way or another every day. But I’m hearing there is a lot of interest, so maybe now is the time to really talk about it.”

Civil War re-enactors drill at an encampment at South Park during events for Civil War on the Western Frontier.

Billings said the area’s Civil War history and its art and film communities all lent themselves to celebrations.

City Commissioner Mike Amyx said he was open to the discussion, but he needs to know one important point: Who is going to pay for it all?

“Anything that brings more people to town would be a positive,” Amyx said. “But if we’re going to use a lot of private resources, that is one thing. If it is a lot of public resources, that is a different thing. I do have to say that money is tight. We get a lot of good requests that we can’t fund.”

Hills said she didn’t have any idea how much an event might cost because it would depend on what type of celebration the community wants to have. But she said many communities found corporate sponsors for their festivals.