First Night Austin

If you liked spending your New Year's Eve at First Night Austin, you have eight months to make other plans. On April 22, the board of the nonprofit that has organized the annual event since 2005 announced that it is dissolving. In one sense, this was the other shoe dropping, since the 2010 First Night celebration had also been canceled over a lack of funding, and with the economy still on the ropes, the challenge of securing financial support – especially on the six-figure corporate sponsorship level – hadn't gotten any easier.

With a quarter-million-dollar price tag (originally a half-million) and the participation of hundreds of Austin creatives, the local edition of what is an international franchise celebrating the arts on December 31 was maybe the most ambitious cultural event ever produced in the city. But the results were spectacular, too, attracting upward of 100,000 people each year. Unfortunately, First Night Austin was dogged by fundraising difficulties and internal strife almost from the outset, leaving the organization to operate almost perpetually in crisis mode and scale back from its original, expansive vision. Last year, the city sponsored a substitute event on New Year's Eve, but it seems unlikely that will be repeated.