CONCORD — Every year for two decades, Bay Area KidFest has drawn about 20,000 people to Todos Santos Plaza during Memorial Day weekend for fun, games and food.
This year will be different.
Instead of going to Concord, the vendors and entertainers of KidFest will be at Heather Farm Park in Walnut Creek on Memorial Day weekend as part of an as-yet-unnamed kids’ festival run by the same organizer, who said he wanted to continue KidFest in Concord.
That organizer wants to continue KidFest in Concord, he said, just not next year. And not on Memorial Day. And maybe not at Todos Santos Plaza.
Downtown Concord business leaders are happy — they had complained that the gated event discouraged participants from going to other downtown businesses and that the traffic and parking woes kept other customers away, according to a summary in a city staff report. At least one restaurant closes for the entire weekend; others lose money.
Council members Mark Peterson and Bill Shinn both want KidFest to continue, they said at a City Council subcommittee meeting this week.
Shinn said waiting until 2011 to do the next KidFest makes sense.
“It’s a reasonable thing to take a year, take a deep breath and try to resolve the issues,” he said.
Peterson is not so sanguine about taking a year off, he said, adding that he has not given up entirely on getting it together for this year.
“I’m not happy with how all this turned out,” he said. “Maybe it’s on its last breath (for 2010).”
Walnut Creek, meanwhile, is happy to add a third big event for Heather Farm Park, the others being the Art and Wine Festival and the Walnut Festival.
“We’re excited to see something focused on younger members of the family,” said Todd Trimble, Walnut Creek’s recreation manager.
The event would require about the same amount of space as the other two festivals, Trimble said.
The new event organizer, Jay Bedecarre, told the Concord committee that the bigger space at Heather Farm Park was better for size and structure of the Memorial Day event than is Todos Santos Plaza, which he said is too cramped.
In 2011 he hopes to do an event called KidFest in Concord — possibly at Todos Santos Plaza, possibly at Mt. Diablo High School. The school could be better, he said, because the site is already fenced in and downtown businesses would not be disturbed. A shuttle would be needed to move people from downtown parking garages, he said.
The festival also could change formats, either ditching the fenced-in admission policy or adding more adult-oriented parts to make it work better with businesses downtown.
Peterson and Shinn also differed in how concerned they were with the downtown businesses’ concerns.
Peterson said the city pours $1 million per year into downtown, so businesses can put up with some losses connected to KidFest.
Shinn said those businesses shouldn’t have to take those losses “just because we say they should.”
