Festival of Friends returning to Gage Park
http://www.thespec.com/news-story/69...-to-gage-park/
The Festival of Friends is coming home.
The Festival announced Tuesday through a short video on Twitter that it will return to Gage Park after being staged for six years in the Ancaster Fairgrounds.
"In 2011, the Festival of Friends was forced to move for a myriad of reasons including unresponsive leadership at city hall," the twitter feed says to the accompaniment of Skylar Grey's singing "I'm Coming Home."
"In the past few months, changes have made it possible for the Festival of Friends to negotiate solutions to many of the concerns that necessitated our exit."
Festival general manager Loren Lieberman confirmed in an interview that the festival, which is entering its 41st year, will be held next August in Gage Park.
Lieberman said Councillors Jason Farr and Matthew Green were instrumental smoothing the way for the festival's return to east Hamilton.
"The landscape has changed," Lieberman said. "City hall has changed."
The festival moved to Ancaster in 2011, with Lieberman saying at the time that it had outgrown Gage Park. Lieberman said recent landscaping changes made to the park made it more amenable to the large crowds of people the free three-day festival draws.