Jordyn Staseson creates a colourful work of art on Second Street during the 2017 Sunshine Chalk Art Festival. The CCDA announced Friday the event, as well as the Classic Car Show, will be discontinued.--NEWS FILE PHOTO MO CRANKER
Medicine Hat News
The City Centre Development Agency board of directors has decided to discontinue the annual Chalk Art Festival and Downtown Car Show events.
The group sent out a press release Friday announcing the cancellations, also giving reasoning behind the decisions.
“The Downtown Car Show was temporarily cancelled last year in an effort to reschedule it around other events similar in nature, however the CCDA Board and Promotions Committee both felt that reallocating the funds and creating a totally different event made more sense than duplicating the same style of event held elsewhere in the city,” read the release.
The CCDA is hoping a car show can still be held downtown, but said it would be an independent show, not something held by the CCDA.
As for the Chalk Art Festival, the CCDA says the event just did not do enough for downtown businesses to warrant keeping.
Although we are aware the Chalk Art Festival was popular with a portion of the general public, the amount of time, money and effort spent on the event did not benefit the downtown businesses enough to justify financing this event any longer,” the release said. “As well as being the CCDA’s most expensive event by far, the Chalk Art Festival made it harder for the general public to park/access stores downtown as the street needed to be closed.”
The CCDA says it is hoping to reorganize the Chalk Art Festival to make it cheaper, as well as friendlier to downtown businesses.
The CCDA is working to reallocate the funds saved by cancelling these two events to enhance its other events.
