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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 last night 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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