The World Beer Festival and the Bull Durham Blues Festival are two of our city's signature events. They help both to reflect and define the city's evolving identity, and they excite locals and draw visitors by the hundreds.

So it is unsettling that the two events are threatened - or at least, at their historic downtown venue. The city is raising serious concerns over the cost it has incurred to repair and maintain the Durham Athletic Park, and has served notice that it won't renew the contract with either festival without coming up with a different way to address that problem.

Unsettling though the news is, the city is only being prudent in safeguarding taxpayer money and the substantial investment that has gone into restoring the DAP. The park is scheduled to become the home of a Minor League Baseball training facility, and also to be the home field for the N. C. Central University baseball team as it transitions to the greater demands of the top level of intercollegiate athletic competition.

The city incurred over $63,000 in costs for the beer festival this fall, and over $27,000 for this year's blues festival.

The plan always was to also continue to use the park for festivals and other events - otherwise, it would sit idle too often. But letting those non-baseball events tear up the playing surface works against the larger interest of the facility.

Of some concern is that the city bought a special protective covering for the field when non-baseball events were taking place. But that covering seems to have proven inadequate for the festivals. We hope there will be some serious investigation whether the performance of the covering was at issue, or whether the festivals simply last longer than the covering can prudently be used.

Although the city has served notice that it can't host the festivals under the existing arrangements, all sides seem guardedly optimistic that a solution can be at hand. Bill Kalkhof, the director of Downtown Durham Inc. and a tireless deal-maker and mediator when the well-being of the city center is at stake, is hopeful, and that's a good sign.

"My experience has always been, in all my years with DDI, that when all the parties agree there's something we want to do in downtown and in this case keep in downtown, we usually figure out how to get it done," Kalkhof told The Herald-Sun's Ray Gronberg.. "I'm optimistic we'll achieve that."

We hope that optimism is rewarded. We want the festivals to remain a central part of downtown's identity, but not at unreasonable, unrecovered expense to the city or serious damage to the DAP.