High on the Hog successor postponed to 2011
An email today from CHA president John Whitworth explains:
The CHA / Style Weekly Autumn BBQ and Music Festival has been postponed. Below is an e-mail from Style Weekly which explains the difficulty we are having in finding a suitable date for this Sept / Oct. This could be a blessing in disguise as we now have more opportunity to meet with more individuals so the concept can be fully explained and feedback received.
If anyone would like to e-mail me or phone with any questions or concerns I would be very pleased to start a dialog
jbwhitworth@comcast.net
644-6559
From Style:
We were thrilled with the opportunity to work with the CHA Board to help revitalize a fall music and barbecue festival in Libby Hill Park. Before and after we communicated early last month, all parties involved worked diligently to bring the idea to fruition by October. We’ve met with and heard from many folks who shared both their concerns and enthusiasm.
Unfortunately, we are disappointed to share that Libby Hill Park is unavailable for a number of dates in October that would have given the festival the best chance to succeed. Although we’ve tried to work things out, it doesn’t look like the logistics are in our favor.
Weddings are being held at the park almost every Saturday from mid-September to mid-October. When the park is open, the Church Hill festival would be forced to compete with the Shriner Pork Festival at the Richmond International Raceway and Halloween. We explored other options, including a Sunday date, but feel strongly that there’s only one opportunity to successfully bring back this Richmond tradition.The good news is that response to holding the festival was positive, and we were able to secure funding for the event. Now we will move forward with plans to hold the festival in 2011. We have secured Saturday, Oct. 1, and Saturday, Oct. 15 as our date and rain date for next year. We’ll continue to move forward on selling sponsorships and scheduling vendors, musicians and others. And our funding partner has already re-committed to 2011.
We look forward to our continued relationship and an extremely successful event in Church Hill on Oct. 1, 2011. Thanks for your support.
I’m already looking forward to it!!
Last I heard, Libby Hill isn’t the only park in Church Hill. Chimborazo Park, for example, is much bigger and highly underutilized. Peraps it doesn’t have the same cache as Libby Hill because it’s not in the St. John’s old and historic dictrict. But there’s more to Church Hill than the St. John’s district, actually, most of Church Hill falls outside that area.