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Venetian Festival Comes to
an End
9/27/11 - After much deliberation,
the Senior Membership of the Venetian Festival made the difficult
decision to retire this iconic event that has been a summer
destination in the City of St. Joseph for 33 years.
The decision
came only after exhaustive discussion of any reasonable means of
redesigning the festival to fit the parameters set forth by the city
during a meeting with city officials last week.
While city officials offered to listen to a
new plan for the festival, they were direct in that they were
inflexible on certain constraints, and festival organizers felt
there was indifference toward working cooperatively to retain the
event in the city.
Following that
meeting, festival organizers studied a variety of concepts for
redesigning the festival to work within the city's parameters
including, as many have often suggested, "returning to its roots" of
a smaller festival confined to the arboretum. However, the passing
of years that, among other things, resulted in significant growth of
trees in the original arboretum location, the need to update the
infrastructure to support the event, public safety issues, and
skyrocketing costs of entertainment, made that option neither viable
logistically or advisable financially for the organization.
Consequently, after much hopeful
discussion of continuing on, the membership came to the sad
conclusion that the Venetian Festival no longer had a home in the
city of St. Joseph, and elected to retire the event.
For festival organizers, it has truly
been an honor and a privilege to present this festival to
southwestern Michigan for the past 33 years. The Venetian Festival
has been a labor of love for all of us involved, and we are deeply
saddened to see the festival come to this end. But we hope that you
- our friends and fans - will continue to cherish the memories of
spending the third weekend of every July at the Venetian Festival,
and we thank you for the wonderful memories you have created for us,
as well.
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