For the second straight year, the city's premier summer musical festival has been snubbed by the provincial government and Celebrate Ontario.
The province issued a press release on Monday announcing the 200 festivals across Ontario that will collectively receive up to $15.3 million to help support new and improved experiences that attract tourists and boost visitor spending.
But North Bay's Summer in the Park Festival isn’t one of them.
Festivals and similar events in Sudbury, on the other hand, received nearly $300,000, led by the Cinefest Sudbury International Film Festival, who will get $84,000, and the Laugh Out Loud Sudbury Comedy Fesitval, who will receive $80,000.
“I would be lying if I didn’t say I’m very disappointed,” said Coun. Jeff Serran, who sits on the Summer in the Park Committee. “I think Sudbury puts on some great festivals, but to find out that they got over $282,000 in funding for eight different festivals, I’m glad for them for that point, but there are more communities in Northern Ontario than that area.”
The local organizing group hoped to secure up to $100,000 in provincial funding to help add daytime attractions and enhance overall programming.
As a result of the denial, the organizing committee is holding a special private meeting on Tuesday to lay out their options moving forward and react to the decision.
At his presentation to council last year, festival chairman John Strang said having a long-term strategic plan and enhanced programming is usually looked highly upon by the province when deciding who gets the grant funding.
As a result, City Council approved doubling the city’s investment into the festival to $80,000 annually, which was touted to be looked upon with approval from the granting powers that be.
However, that proved to have not been enough to woo the Celebrate Ontario bunch.
“We’re going to investigate and try to find out some answers,” said Serran. “Everyone around council, we committed to it and wanted to leverage the dollars.
“I would like to have a review of the application that we put in because I know our staff worked hard on it and we did the things that they said we needed to do,” he continued. “We were looking at different avenues, we had things that were a little different, we have great community partners around the city for this, so there are going to be questions and hopefully they will be able to give us answers.”
Last year they were also denied by Celebrate Ontario and the Tourism Event Marketing Program, but the programming budget doesn’t account for that funding because of its conditional natural.
This year’s headliners include country star Tim Hicks and homegrown talent Cory Marquardt on the Saturday night.
However, according to the event’s website, the second headliner and all of Friday and Sunday's musical entertainment slots have yet to be filled or announced.
In 2014, the festival was granted $60,000 in grant funding, which they used for the beach volleyball attraction plus some extra dollars for marketing the event.
The festival group is attempting to earn back some of the $155,978 deficit they have amounted over the past two years.
Last year’s edition of the festival resulted in a $109,569 deficit, while 2014 festival resulted in a $96,040 deficit which they offset by almost half by using what remained in the reserve fund.
However, the overall economic impact from the festival weekend last year was estimated to be roughly $6.7 million.
Wristband sales last year increased to 5,694 this year, up more than 40 per cent from the 2014 edition.
This year, the group have a conservative target of selling closer to 6,000 wristbands.
“We’re going to have to move some things around, but we’re still going to have an amazing event,” said Serran. “We’re going to be a competitive festival - It wasn’t that long ago that we were deemed one of the top five festivals in our area.
“I know we want to look at a local component and we’re looking at different things around the city that will allow for local entertainment, so I think people will be pleasantly surprised when we make this announcement coming up."
Wristbands are on sale for $29.99, including taxes, until April 24. Prices then climb to $35 from April 25 to June 30 and then $50 from July 1st thorough festival weekend
