A new summer-long festival could help bring locals and tourists alike to Rapid City's downtown.

The Summer Nights festival is a 12-week program from 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. each Thursday evening on Seventh Street between Main and St. Joseph streets. The free event will feature music, food, vendors and family entertainment from June 12 to Aug. 28.

"Hopefully, it's a mechanism that will give businesses downtown a reason to stay open. We want to create an environment to bring people downtown past 5 p.m.," said Jeff Carsrud, one of the event's organizers. "Everybody has been super cooperative, because I think everybody is looking for ways to help downtown break out of a shell."

Each week, a different "spotlight" sponsor will influence the "flair" or style of the event, and a family activities sponsor will coordinate the family activities. All but two of the sponsorships have been sold, Carsrud said.

The event will have live music and a contained beer garden on one end of the street, family activities on the other end, and food and other vendors along the street. The Chamber is also going to offer an arts walk guided tour of the presidential statues.

"We want it to be very arts oriented," Carsrud said. "We want to have lots of arts in action - people doing sculpting, stained glass, carving right in front of you."

One of the reasons Seventh Street was chosen is the proximity to Art Alley and two artist galleries.

"There's a lot of arts core there already," Carsrud said. "For the kids' activities, we want to organize a different fun event each week; whether it's a food fight, races or an obstacle course, and along with it, always have some kind of face painting and that type of thing."

It's the kind of event that could create an incentive for downtown retailers to stay open longer on Thursday nights, and would give people a reason to come downtown - both of which are things tourism consultant Roger Brooks recommends.

To see Brooks' full report and all 32 of his recommendations to improve Rapid City go to www.visitrapidcity.com, click on the home tab in the top navigation bar and then select Roger Brooks.