Oktoberfest finds a new home with festhall at Lot 42
Organizers envision a Munich-style central hub for festival
KITCHENER — Lot 42 is officially an Oktoberfest festhall now — believed to be the biggest local hall ever.
This is about the survival for not-for-profit K-W Oktoberfest, fresh off an $89,000 loss last year — plodding merchandise sales at the downtown Kitchener castle headquarters accounted for a big chunk of that loss. Also worrisome is a dwindling count of official festhalls that has, in recent decades, dipped from 25 to 20 to a dozen.
“Many of our festhalls right now are floundering,” organization president Margo Jones said.
Three years ago, original festhalls at the Aud, Moses Springer Arena and the Waterloo Memorial Recreation Complex pulled out of the festival lineup. A year ago, Bingemans decided to go its own way with its own unaccredited celebrations.
Last year, festhall locations spread out wide to include London, Cambridge, Petersburg and Elmira.
Lot 42, which hosted last year’s gala festival events and will again this year, now gives Oktoberfest a centralized home base.
But ale and schnitzel for thousands can test the plumbing in any festhall, especially a new one that will open its 54,000 square feet for six days during the 50th anniversary of the local Bavarian celebration Oct. 5-13.
“We have 109 bathrooms,” said Patrick Doyle, managing partner of the Lot 42 event venue on Ardelt Place in Kitchener. “There’s never a line.”
“There are more washrooms here than in the ACC,” said Oktoberfest executive director Alfred Lowrick.
But this is about a lot more than potties and polkas and limited parking of only 362 spaces at Lot 42 site, which often shuttles its eventgoers to parking space on neighbouring properties.
“This can now be the home of Oktoberfest,” Jones said of the Lot 42 partnership.
Lot 42 has the two hockey rinks-long Factory hall, where parts for the Saint Lawrence Seaway locks and underground Quebec generators were once fashioned. The smaller 80-ton crane room, where nuclear reactor plates were crafted in the 1980s, is beside it. Out back, 10 empty acres could one day house party tents.
“The problem we’ve had in the past is people come to the city and go, ‘Well, where’s Oktoberfest?’ You have to go to this club. You have to go down here.”
Now, Lot 42 and the 4,000-capacity Concordia — the club that first inspired the festival — could form a central Oktoberfest hub divided by Highway 85, not far from the new LRT line.
“If they let us build a nice Oktoberfest bridge over the highway, that would be even better,” Doyle said.
But before pedestrian tunnels or overpasses can be discussed, Lot 42 has to prove itself a worthy flagship venue.
“I hope it’s a 50-year deal,” Doyle said. “We’ll see after the first one.”
Jones said the other festhalls had a very positive response when told about the Lot 42 development during a Wednesdaymorning meeting.
Jones said the Transylvania Club, which sold off its own building eight years ago and used the soon-to-close Stampede Corral to host its festhall, was eagerly receptive as Lot 42 guarantees the club ongoing festhall space.
In fact, the still-forming plan is that all the festhalls will help run the new space and make money off it, perhaps from a share of ticket sales or by participating in games on the site. Service clubs can join in, too.
“Now we can start talking to people,” Jones said. “It’s early.”
A centralized venue is hardly a novel concept.
Jack Bishop, a founding father of the local German festival despite his Irish background, recalls how Oktoberfest visionary Owen Lackenbauer always wanted to have a central location.
Bishop sees great potential in the 17-acre Lot 42 site.
“They’ve got quite a bit of property there,” said Bishop, who turned 79 on Wednesday.
“It’s possible with that, and with Concordia being across the highway. If you were able to get a bridge across there or tunnel underneath, that would be a really great area that you could almost have it one location — similar to Munich.”
Bishop, who is helping chair Oktoberfest’s 50th anniversary committee, has been to Munich about 15 times.
He believes the main Factory fest hall at Lot 42 is very similar to the impressive beer barns of Munich.
“Just because of its size,” Bishop said. “It kind of reminds me a little bit of what you see in Munich. It’s sort of nostalgic in that way.”
But a Munich feel and decorations won’t matter much if the Lot 42 festhall, and its 109 water closets, aren’t packed with festers next October.
“You always seem to have a better time than if you’ve got one half-full,” said Bishop, a long feather poking out of his Oktoberfest cap.
“You could probably put our smaller size halls, all of them, in that building, it’s so large. It will be a challenge to really fill it up. But if it gets filled up and really gets rocking and rolling, it’s going to be something to see.”