Heritage Days, the annual summer festival in St. Paul Park, has a great history.
But its future is uncertain.
The city is seeking an organization to manage the festival, and invited interested parties to contact the city by Monday. But no one had come forward as of last week, raising the possibility that the festival would have to be cut back or even eliminated.
“I hope that doesn’t happen,” said Mayor Keith Franke.
Many of Minnesota’s hundreds of annual festivals are facing an economic climate that is not festive. They are getting hit by failing sponsorships, higher costs and unrealistic expectations of audiences. Some — but not all — are having trouble attracting volunteers.
While some fast-adapting festivals are thriving, many are fighting for survival.
St. Paul’s Taste of Minnesota has been dead for three years, Stillwater’s Lumberjack Days for two and St. Paul’s Festa Italiana for one.
Organizers are hoping to resurrect all three in various forms next summer, but Kent Gustafson says the festivals will be facing new obstacles.
“I think it’s getting harder to run a festival,” said Gustafson, who recently retired after teaching festival management for 15 years for the University of Minnesota Extension Service.
Randy Dewitz agrees. He owns Fanfare Attractions, a Minneapolis consulting firm that has managed or advised organizers of Cinco de Mayo, the St. Paul Winter Carnival, Grand Old Day and the Twin Cities Pride Festival.
It’s normal, he said, for festivals to start up, die off and evolve to fit the changing tastes of the public.
“A lot of festivals will bounce back. Some will have to be smaller and shorter,” said Dewitz. “A lot of them are going under.”
A list compiled by the University of Minnesota Tourism Center includes more than 500 festivals, from the Laskiainen Finnish Sliding Festival in Palo to Ox Cart Days in Crookston. Other tallies of annual Minnesota festivals are higher, including privately owned festivals such as the Renaissance Festival in Shakopee and the granddaddy of them all, the State Fair.
Dewitz said the current downturn for festivals is part of a cycle, which should turn around in a few years when corporate sponsorships return.
He pegs the slump to the start of the recession in 2008 — when festivals were forced to adapt to new realities.
One was the fact that Minnesotans hate to pay admission.
“St. Paul had a glaring example of that with the Taste of Minnesota,” Gustafson said.
For 27 years that festival was free. But it charged admission in 2010, attendance tanked, and it has been suspended for the past three years.
“So how does a festival survive?” Gustafson asked. Only through sponsorships, he said.
That source of revenue dried up during the recession and is coming back slowly.
Festa Italiana in St. Paul attracted 20,000 people in 2011 and 2012, but a lack of sponsors caused a cancellation of the festival last summer.
John Andreozzi, festival board president, was surprised to see how tough it was to find sponsors.
“You used to just go out and grab those people overnight,” he said.
Gustafson said that liability insurance has also plagued festivals.
“More and more things are prone to be liability issues,” he said. Insurers worry about lawsuits involving bad food, injuries on rides, drinking, accidents and any activity involving children.
With the financial pressures, festivals seem to be able to offer less — but audiences are expecting more, Gustafson said.
Strawberry Fest in Cottage Grove has learned that lesson. In recent years it has added a talent show, pie-eating contest, helicopter rides and a cooking competition.
That’s one reason the festival hit an attendance record last summer with as many as 20,000 visitors.
“We take risks and add new things,” said committee president Lori Olsen.
Gustafson said some festivals find it difficult to get volunteers because of increasing time pressure.
“Festivals really have to up their game to get volunteers,” he said.
That is one problem with the endangered Heritage Days in St. Paul Park, according to Franke, the mayor. “Part of it’s the volunteers, and part of it is the liability,” he said.
Sometimes stress forces adaptation.
The Farmington Dew Days nearly died seven years ago when the primary sponsor, Mountain Dew, yanked its support. Organizers responded by moving the location, adding days and charging admission — with disastrous results.
“We almost went belly up, trying to be too big and too long,” said Dew Days chairwoman Darla Donnelly.
Now, the festival is back in downtown Farmington, admission is free, and the crowds have returned. The festival drew about 20,000 visitors last summer, Donnelly estimated.
“Things are going way better now than they have ever gone,” she said.
At other times, festivals perish — and are resurrected in another form.
Lumberjack Days in Stillwater was last held in 2011, after which its organizer was charged with not paying bills. The city had no summer festival for two years, but a similar festival called the Stillwater Log Jam is being planned for summer 2014.
Taste of Minnesota is coming back in 2014, organizers say, complete with free admission.
St. Paul Park’s Heritage Days attracted maybe 2,000 people in 2013, city officials said. They hope the parade and the co-ed mud volleyball games will once again draw crowds in 2014.
But it’s also possible that it will become a single Heritage Day.
“I think Heritage Days will exist in some capacity,” said city administrator Kevin Walsh.
Bob Shaw can be reached at 651-228-5433. Follow him at twitter.com/BshawPP.
Copyright 2013 Pioneer Press.