Despite the best efforts of community stakeholders, organizers of the 16 year-old Wintergrass music festival will move the event to the Bellevue Hyatt in 2010. Stakeholders including the City, Convention and Visitors Bureau, Broadway Center, Chamber of Commerce, and the Marriott and Murano hotels offered a fantastic package of funding, discounts, deals and services to entice Wintergrass to stay. A number of factors including hotel rates, facilities, competing events and a need to reinvent the festival lead to this decision.
It’s a sad day for Tacoma to lose yet another festival. Already this year, organizers of the Hot Rod O’Rama car show and Showcase Tacoma have announced that those events are cancelled. The loss of these events is just one more reason (as if you needed another) to support and enjoy the 5th annual Urban Art Festival on August 1st along Jefferson Ave. in front of the Swiss.
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Just to clarify, Wintergrass is not a summer festival...pretty much by definition and by name...but yes, it is sad, though I never participated I thought it was a cool fixture in Tacoma.
ReplyDeleteThings are VERY slow downtown right now and I'm not sure what will bring people back. My sense is the waterfront will help, but the recent headline Seattle news on the condo front (few buyers either there or here) doesn't make it any easier to build momentum.