Festival of Friends may pilot next Wingfest
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Wingfest, a signature central Hamilton festival, is teetering between landing on the chopping block and taking flight under new management.
Hamilton Waterfront Trust officials revealed Thursday that their festival’s losses last year were equivalent to a quarter of the event’s overall operating budget and that they are negotiating a handover of the June 10-12 event to Festival of Friends.
“The operating budget is just over $200,000 and our losses last year were $50,000,” said Ward 2 Councillor Jason Farr, one of two new council appointees to the waterfront trust. Wingfest, which runs mid-June outside the Discovery Centre at Pier 8, was created by the waterfront trust three years ago. It attracted 26,000 people in 2008, 50,000 in 2009, and 46,000 last year.
The trust seriously considered cancelling the three-day festival this year, Farr said.
“The discussion was based on the fact that it’s a whole lot of work, we had a $50,000 loss, and (Wingfest’s) requirements in manpower. Are we festival organizers? No. That’s why the discussion and decision to make an arrangement with Loren (Lieberman) and Festival of Friends was put on the table.”
Farr said the board believes Wingfest already is a success despite the financial loss and “that just that one little piece is missing to really put us over the top and make it extra good.”
Earlier this week, the city’s grants subcommittee approved the trust’s request for a $20,000 grant for Wingfest 2011, which must be ratified the audit and finance committee and finally by council.
Waterfront Trust executive director Werner Plessl said rain and poor weather at last year’s Wingfest were major factors contributing to the $50,000 loss. Furthermore, “in these economic times, we had difficulties finding sponsors.”
Plessl said Wingfest also lost money in 2008 and 2009, but he couldn’t remember how much. “It was less than last year,” he said.
Last year’s losses have been covered by the trust’s reserves and are not included in a recent budget request for $150,000 intended to cover the operating costs for the new skating rink on the waterfront, Plessl said. The budget request has raised questions at City Hall. The trust, an arms-length charitable agency created by the city to develop the waterfront’s recreational and tourism potential, is “in trouble,” said city finance chief Rob Rossini earlier this week. “Right now their revenues are not covering their expenses.”
Festival of Friends general manager Loren Lieberman said that he and his board spent the past three weeks taking a hard look at Wingfest’s books and operations before concluding it would be possible to mount it.
“We would need to do it in 10 weeks,” Lieberman said. “That’s not a lot of time for an event of this calibre, but we hope to have an agreement with the waterfront trust very shortly.”
The short timeline would likely scare off many other festival organizers, Lieberman said, but Festival of Friends’s size gives it an expertise and volunteer base large enough to be able to save Wingfest on short notice. Festival of Friends is the largest free music festival in Ontario.
“It’s not without risk, but I feel strongly about the retention and health of Wingfest and the overall events scene in Hamilton,” he said. “I’m not sure Hamiltonians fully appreciate how lucky they are to have all these festivals that are free or mostly free.”
When Festival of Friends’ offices were destroyed in the 2004 collapse of the Tivoli Theatre, the community rallied to save that year’s festival, he said. “I’ve never forgotten how folks in the community like The Hamilton Spectator and music icon Randy Bachman stepped up to help us.”
Assuming the deal gets done, Lieberman said FoF will use its music programming muscle, redesign Wingfest to look different by drawing more on the waterfront’s beauty and exploring some synergy with two other important downtown festivals — SuperCrawl and Open Streets Hamilton — that are centred on James Street North’s arts scene.
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