Dead on Vine?
By Dave Eisenstadter
The Keene Sentinel
Published Thursday, September 09, 2010
This year’s Pumpkin Festival in Keene could be the last; Center Stage bowing out
With less than six weeks to go until the 20th annual Pumpkin Festival in Keene, organizers say this year’s gathering of jack-o’-lanterns will be the last.
Unless someone else takes it over.
Growing crowds, increased expenses, a reduction in funding from the city and difficulty raising money from other sources were all listed as reasons for ending the event in a letter to The Sentinel from Center Stage, the organization that runs the festival.
Center Stage still needs to raise $25,000 to cover festival expenses this year.
Suzanne L. Woodward, executive director of Center Stage, has been to the Pumpkin Festival every year since its beginning in 1991, when it was called the Harvest Festival. She took over organizing the event in 2005.
“As far as I’m concerned, this is the last one we’ll be doing,” Woodward said this morning. “We can’t think of any circumstances at this time that would provoke us into doing another festival of this nature.”
Center Stage will continue to run the tree lighting ceremony at Central Square during the holidays and may introduce other events, but not of the magnitude of Pumpkin Festival, Woodward said.
While the Harvest Festival began with a modest 600 pumpkins and about 1,000 participants, the Pumpkin Festival grew to include nearly 30,000 pumpkins and about 75,000 participants from all over the world.
The Center Stage organization has not spoken to another organization about taking over the festival.
The end of the festival could hit area nonprofit organizations especially hard, as many rely on it as a major fundraiser.
The Keene Daycare Center is one such organization. A few years ago, the day-care center opened a food station at the festival and it brings in about $5,000 per year, according to Program Director Sara M. Wright. That’s more than double any other fundraiser it runs, she said.
“For other not-for-profits, and ours as well, it will definitely make things difficult,” Wright said this morning. “It’s just another hit to add to our financial woes right now with state budget cuts; now our fundraisers are disappearing.”
Janet Kingsbury Warren is executive director of the American Red Cross N.H. West Chapter, which has a fundraising event at the Pumpkin Festival. While the chapter is not dependent upon the money the festival brings in, there is more to the festival than the bottom line, she said today.
“It’s a group bonding experience,” Warren said. “We love representing the organization, we love being out in public and having a person in a blood drop costume and we’re out with all of our other nonprofit colleagues. It’s about people and experience and the exposure; it’s a great, significant event.”
Warren said she belongs to other organizations that count heavily on the money they make at the festival. The Interact Club and the Rotary Club of Keene both have major fundraisers. Money raised from the event goes to buy back-to-school clothes for families in need, Warren said.
The festival first experienced financial trouble following a city decision to reduce police and fire funding for the event in 2009. In 2008, the city set aside nearly $70,000 for the event, and the following year the amount was reduced to $25,000.
The full cost for the festival is about $200,000, and losing the money from the city put its long-term viability into question, Woodward had said in 2009.
But the city had to make cuts because of its own tight budget, according to City Councilor Cynthia C. Georgina. The council thought that the festival could get funding from other sources, particularly the restaurant and hospitality industry that Georgina said benefits from the festival’s influx of visitors.
Sufficient money did not come, and Center Stage was forced to exhaust its rainy day fund.
Georgina said many Keene residents have also told her the festival has become more for outsiders than for locals.
“I think it’s a pity it’s going to close down,” Georgina said. “I just wish they could find a way to make it more the event for local people it once was.”
The festival would be too much for the city to take on, Georgina added. The question is: Is there another organization or individual who could?
In the meantime, for this year, efforts are already under way to reclaim Keene’s lost record for most lit jack-o-lanterns in one place at one time, which it first captured in 1992 and held until Boston took it away in 2006.
Last year, the festival set a city record of 29,762, achingly close to Boston’s total of 30,128 gourds. This year, Center Stage plans to donate 12,000 pumpkins to schools and not-for-profit organizations toward what may be Keene’s last chance for Guiness Book glory.
For Woodward and Center Stage, the problem is that so many people love the Pumpkin Festival. Reducing the size is not an option because it has become so well-known, and the large size is what prevents Center Stage from continuing it.
“Success was our undoing,” she said.
Dave Eisenstadter can be reached at 352-1234, extension 1432, or deisenstadter@keenesentinel.com
