Heritage Festival gets boot from barn
The old, brown barn near the gates of Hawrelak Park doesn’t look like it’s worth fighting over.
For more than 30 years, the Edmonton Heritage Festival has used the barn to house the equipment for its massive summer celebration of multiculturalism.
This is where the festival stored its tents, its flags, its ticket booths, its water barrels, its picnic tables, its electrical plugs, its hoses, its deep-fat fryers.
Now, the city has told the festival it must vacate the site — in two weeks.
“We are indeed being forced out of our facility,” Jim Gibbon, the festival’s executive director, told me Wednesday.
“We are saddened because we built it for ourselves in 1986, the same year we built the Heritage Amphitheatre for the people of the City of Edmonton, and it has been the base of operations for the Edmonton Heritage Festival for 32 years.”
Last week, they were ordered to move out of the barn by Aug. 21.
“We have tried for two years to convince the city to let us keep our building — which, to reiterate, we built and paid for — but they sent us a final eviction notice for removal from our site,” Gibbon said.
The city has offered to lease the festival a soft-sided, clothwall Quonset hut just east of the barn. But the hut has far less usable storage space, and its sliding metal doors hang above the ground, meaning rain water and leaves wash right in.
Wednesday, the floor had several large puddles — though it hadn’t rained since Saturday.
“The Quonset’s always wet. And since this is not usable space, you can’t put anything of value in it,” Gibbon said.
Crews are on site now, tearing down the tents, rolling up the banners, stacking the tables.
Gibbon doesn’t know where they’re going to put it all.
“The setup for this is humongous. I’ve accepted that we’re out. We just have no place to go,” he said.
So why is the city evicting the festival from its own building, especially given how complicated and labour-intensive it is to set up?
City officials say the festival doesn’t own the barn. Period. And that it will make the Quonset hut weatherproof within weeks.
“(The) city leased the land to the festival for $1 per year, with an agreement in the lease that any improvements — including buildings — would revert to the City of Edmonton upon expiry of that lease. This occurred in 1986 and the city has been responsible for all upkeep and operating costs of the building since that time,” the city said Wednesday in a written statement.
According to the city, the site is unsafe because the barn is next to a city maintenance yard. Activities in the yard, I was told, require special training or protective equipment.
But the service yard has been there just as long as the barn. Nothing has changed. The site is no less safe than it has been for the last three decades.
The city won’t tell me whether there have been any accidents or near misses on the site, citing privacy reasons.
They’ll only say that their “awareness of safety has increased.”
And yes. They intend to use this suddenly “unsafe” site themselves. For their own storage needs.
And no. They won’t provide the festival with alternative space.
“We have checked our surplus inventory and are unable to provide space at another city location,” city spokeswoman Gayleen Froese said via email.
“The festival would be responsible to find alternate storage. Some alternatives include signing the lease for use of the Quonset and surrounding area, working with other festivals, renting space, finding space through sponsorship agreements, or renting temporary container space.”
That won’t be cheap. Or convenient.
Such as, the festival could store all its stuff off site. But that will make setting up and tearing down the festival far more costly and complicated.
The heritage festival is one of Edmonton’s premier, signature events. Why is the city sabotaging it, in what seems like such a silly, petty, way?
This won’t just hurt one festival. It could also hamstring other smaller events, from the triathlon to Silver Skate to Shakespeare in the Park, which routinely borrow the heritage festival’s gear and infrastructure for their own festivals.
What happened to our whole Festival City ethos?
These days, city bureaucrats sometimes seem more interested in obstructing our flagship festivals, from the Highland Games to the Edmonton Folk Music Festival, than assisting them.
Right now, Heritage Festival board president Michael Kraus is still hoping for some kind of negotiated agreement, perhaps with help from city councillors. As for Gibbon?
He’s attempting to be philosophical.
“We’re very happy to work with the city to put on the heritage festival for the next 100 years.
“I’m not here to slag the city in any way. We’re just looking for space, and we need to let people know.”