COVID takes toll on area festivals

By LOU WILIN STAFF WRITER The COVID-19 pandemic has forced summertime festivals to be canceled or scaled back. Forest’s Tree Town Festival and North Baltimore’s Good Ole Summertime Festival have been canceled. It appears that Arlington’s Homecoming Festival may be scaled back to people picking up homemade meals at the park on Aug. 8. Festival leaders will be making final decisions in the coming weeks, said Junior Weihrauch. The McComb Cookie Festival will not be held this summer. But festival committee members are considering approaching village officials about holding “something” in the fall, said Kim Louviaux, who was chairwoman of McComb Cookie Festival last year. Leaders of festivals in Carey and Mount Blanchard also are weighing their options. “When the state fair canceled, that kind of got everybody’s attention,” said Steve Zender, board president of Carey Fest. That comment was echoed by officials in other villages. Cancellation of Forest’s Tree Town Festival was the right thing to do, though still a bummer, said Dustin Evans, chairman of Forest’s festival. “It’s kind of a homecoming type of thing for a lot of people. There’s a lot of people — family — from out of town, that plan vacations around that (festival) to see family members from out of town,” Evans said. “They plan to come back for that weekend.” “That was really kind of the hardest thing for us: our folks that grew up here, that aren’t here anymore, they come back for it, and now that’s taken away this year,” he said. In North Baltimore, it seemed like it was painful for Stephanie Walters, a Good Ole Summertime Festival committee member, to even discuss “that unfortunate decision” to cancel. “We actually discussed it for months. We were trying to figure out what to do,” she said. “It is a very expensive process to plan this event and to go through with everything,” Walters said. “As all this stuff started creeping up here at the beginning of the year, it definitely changed the tone of our meetings a little bit. It was a little bit of the unknown.” “We wanted to do what was best for our community, not just for the event but what the committee thought was best for the people of the community,” she said. Logistical and financial considerations factored into the cancellation of the festival in Forest. Bands, baton groups and cheerleaders from area schools would not be participating in the parade, Evans said. The Tree Town Festival includes a royalty contest for king, queen, prince, princess and baby. Winners are based on who sells the most tickets before the event, Evans said. “Those are mostly sold door to door, so we were limited with what we could do there, too,” he said. “That’s a big chunk of our event is those ticket sales.” Local businesses, often big financial sponsors of festivals, have been struggling in the pandemic-induced economic slump. “Nobody is in any position to do any fundraising at this time,” said Louviaux. “Your fundraising time is months before the festival. Literally months and months before the festival. There is all of that planning,” she said. “With things being shut down virtually for three months, it certainly stifles any forward movement on what can be done as a community.” In addition, there have been no guidelines set for villages about how to hold a festival, Louviaux said. Wilin: 419-427-8413 Send an E-mail to Lou Wilin