Festival in the Park focusing on family fun

Visitors to Danville’s annual Festival in the Park will see some big changes this year, according to Lee Davis, president of the festival’s board of directors.

Davis said the children’s area will triple in size, the heath fair will double in size and a second stage is being added for local entertainers to showcase their talents.

“We’re adding a car and motorcycle cruise-in, and a touch-a-truck event with the fire department, police, life-saving crew, etc. Kids can see and touch them and learn about the different kinds of equipment,” Davis said.

The decision to expand the children’s area was an easy one, Davis said, because it was the busiest area at past festivals. He said they don’t want to turn the festival into a carnival, but do want more interactive things for both children and adults to enjoy.

But expanding those areas came at a price — cancelling the Pigs in the Park barbecue contest.

“We outgrew each other,” Davis said, noting that the number of contestants has grown steadily over the years, taking up more space and using more resources.

“The utilities for 55 teams, water and electric, was overtaxing the park,” Heather Vipperman, assistant director of tourism and a member of the Festival’s board.

Vipperman said the teams cooked all night long, staying in campers at the park.

“Ballou Park is not designed to be a campground,” Vipperman said.

She also said volunteers were being overrun with the sheer volume of paperwork necessary to hold a state championship cookoff sanctioned by the Kansas City Barbeque Society — paperwork that has grown as the number of contestants and judges have increased.

“Judges have to be certified, teams have to be certified, and there are 55 teams and 70 or more judges,” Vipperman said. “There’s a lot more to putting on an event of that size.”

The Festival in the Park board voted to eliminate Pigs in the Park from its festival at a meeting last summer, but Bill Sgrinia, director of Danville Parks, Recreation and Tourism, said he invited Bill McMann, founder of Pigs in the Park, to hold it as a separate event.

“The city doesn’t run Festival in the Park, but Parks & Rec works closely with festival, and some of our staff are on the board,” Sgrinia said. “Partnering with community organizations to provide these events is a more efficient way to do it.”

Sgrinia said volunteers do most of the work at Festival in the Park.

“If we had to pay staff to it (the work), we could never do it,” Sgrinia said.

Sgrinia said all McMann has to do is provide the city with a letter saying what he needs to run his event — the same way anyone has to apply to use city parks.

“It was not an easy decision,” Davis said. “He (McMann) put in a lot of time, a lot of energy into it; it was his passion.”

Ultimately, though, the board decided it wanted to expand the events more residents could participate in, Davis said.

McMann said he was surprised and disappointed by the board’s decision to eliminate Pigs in the Park, but has come to terms with the decision.

“Tough decisions had to be made for the good of the whole organization,” he said. “The Festival in the Park board chose to bid farewell to Pigs in the Park. There just wasn’t enough room to host the event and staff members were being utilized for more popular activities that met the needs of a larger group of participants.”

McMann says he wasn’t able to come up with a new plan for Pigs in the Park for 2010, but hopes to hold it again one day.

“I’ve been thinking about what we can do to create more involvement, to make it a real family event,” he said.

In the meantime, McMann has filled his time with a new job, and has had time to cook competitively again — something he gave up while organizing Pigs in the Park.

“I don’t mind having a break this year,” McMann said — but he invites anyone to send him suggestions for future events at bmcmann1@yahoo.com.