The City of Laconia, according to City Manager Kirk Beattie, has plans for more conversations with the Lakes Region Chamber of Commerce about keeping the headquarters of the New Hampshire Pumpkin Festival in the downtown rather than moving it to The Weirs.
In January, the chamber, which is based in Laconia, said it was moving the Pumpkin Festival up to Lake Winnipesaukee.
The chamber said the move was intended to expand the event and to also reduce use conflicts in the downtown area, but during a public hearing on the proposed relocation at the Feb. 12 City Council meeting, it was clear that the idea had little support.
The next day, Beattie, on behalf of Mayor Andrew Hosmer and all six city councilors, sent a letter to Karmen Gifford, the president of the chamber and to its board, expressing dismay about taking the festival out of the downtown.
“Karmen,” wrote Beattie, “As you know, the February 12, 2024 meeting of the Laconia City Council had as an agenda item general discussion of the planned move of Pumpkin Fest. Ahead of the meeting, the Mayor and Council were provided with your memorandum which laid out the move, and your intent on having some attractions in and around the downtown area but headquartered in the Weirs. The Council had received enough public concern to request this be a formal agenda item.”
During the council’s public hearing on the matter, Beattie said there was “overwhelming public opposition to moving the heart of the event away from downtown Laconia. Residents and business owners alike spoke to their desire to see this wonderful event remain downtown. No public comments last night spoke in favor of the move. Walkability for residents and support of businesses that are normally open during October were common themes.”
Echoing the public comments, the mayor and councilors, when they discussed it on Feb. 12, were “clear and unified that they want to see the NH Pumpkin Festival remain a downtown centered event. The city remains open to discussing how to continue to support this extremely successful downtown centered event,” said Beattie
On Tuesday, Beattie said “There are no current additional conversations planned, but I would expect more to come.”
Gifford did not respond to a Feb. 15 email that asked her to comment on moving the Pumpkin Festival to The Weirs and also on the assertion by Charlie St. Clair, who helped bring the festival to downtown Laconia from Keene in 2015, that the festival would remain downtown.
As of 2013, what was then known as the Keene Pumpkin Festival was drawing tens of thousands of visitors and setting multiple world record for the number of lit jack-o’-lanterns.
But disturbances during the 2014 Keene Festival — not at the event itself, but at parties at the off-campus residences of Keene State College students — later led the Keene City Council to not approve permits for the 2015 festival.
Concerned that the Festival might die, St. Clair, the longtime executive director of Laconia Motorcycle Week and currently also a state representative, approached the Festival’s then-organizers, Let it Shine, Inc., which agreed to hold the Festival in downtown Laconia.
The Lakes Region Chamber of Commerce co-organized the Festival in 2015 with Let It Shine, Inc., but has been the sole organizer since. The COVID-19 pandemic caused the chamber to cancel the festival in 2020 while what the chamber said was a lack of volunteers and funds led to its cancellation in 2021.
St. Clair, in a Feb. 15 telephone interview, stressed that there were several communities that were very interested in being the new home of the Keene Pumpkin Festival, but that Let It Shine chose Laconia explicitly because of the attractiveness and infrastructure of the downtown.
He recalled that then-Mayor Ed Engler suggested that the Laconia Motorcycle Week Association run the festival, but St. Clair told Engler that the association’s plate was full.
“And I will quote him (Engler, who died from cancer in 2021) now: ‘Well, then, I think we’ll give it to the chamber to run, not to own, but to run,” said St. Clair.
Engler acknowledged, said St Clair, that running a two-day festival was “thankless work, frankly,” which is why St. Clair thinks now is a good time for the city council to revisit an old idea: creating a permanent, municipal “events department” to coordinate the Pumpkin Festival and maybe one day, Motorcycle Week, too.
Such a department “can more than bring the money back to pay whatever staff is there and the city can still make money on it,” said St. Clair, who added that a successful model can be found in Sturgis, South Dakota, which annually hosts the largest motorcycle rally in the U.S.
A Pumpkin Festival on the Lakeside Avenue boardwalk in late October, when most businesses there are closed, is simply not the same “flavor” as a festival in the downtown, he said.
The latter is “a lot of work and I know what the chamber goes through and that gets back to my nonprofit thing,” said St. Clair, explaining that “nonprofits are not a lot of fun to work for” because of the constant challenges of securing adequate funding and personnel.
A city events department would alleviate those pressures, he said, while ensuring the continuity of the Pumpkin Festival.
