BRINNON — ShrimpFest organizers are taking a year off to seek more help and consider a new location, so no festival is planned next Memorial Day weekend.
But Brinnon’s biggest annual event, which has drawn thousands to the Hood Canal town in the past, will be back in 2013, promised Joe Baisch, president of the Emerald Towns Alliance Committee, which organizes the event.
And he expects it will be better than ever.
“We just don’t have enough people to do it,” Baisch said Friday. “Our plan is to rebuild the team, starting now.”
Baisch said that after 17 years of the festival highlighting the Hood Canal spot shrimp, the planning committee, which once had about 10 people, had shrunk to about four or five people.
“It’s normal attrition,” he said. “It’s not a fight.”
“It just takes a team to do this.”
He sent out a letter last week asking for volunteers.
“It’s kind of exciting because I’ve got people calling,” he said. “I’ve got three or four people with experience who are interested in helping.”
Seeks new venue
The committee also will seek a new venue for the two-day festival.
State Parks notified the group in late August it would require a fee for parking at the festival’s traditional spot at Dosewallips State Park.
“We were going to negotiate that, but then we decided that we don’t have enough people,” Baisch said.
“The State Parks organization is going through a horrific budget time,” he said, adding that the requirement “comes from the top.”
“The park has been a phenomenal partner in this,” he said. “We will continue to work closely with local park management people.”
He and other planners also hope to improve the festival for 2013.
One example would be to add more music, he said.
And he hopes to get more communitywide support of the festival, which he describes as an “important economic development event.”
He said the festival brings in 10,000 to 12,000 people in two days.
“That’s not bad,” he said. “Local businesses do well. I want the community to want this and help put it on.”
Baisch said vendors — which numbered between 85 and 90 at the event in May — would have to be notified now for a festival next year.
Take a breather
“This is a good time to take a breather,” said Baisch, who added that he has been involved since the beginning.
“Three of the main groups are still involved,” he said.
The original idea was to put on a community festival that would celebrate the shrimp fishery and give visitors something to do, Baisch said.
“Then we got some good management talent in the community and created what we have now” — a festival that draws visitors from throughout the region, he said.
“We just got to that point where all organizations get to where we seriously have to go into a rebuilding mode,” Baisch said. “It is like anything else. It’s time to do some reflection and rebuild a team.”
Volunteers interested in helping with ShrimpFest 2013 are asked to phone 360-796-3432.
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Managing Editor/News Leah Leach can be reached at 360-417-3531 or leah.leach@peninsuladailynews.com.
