A new festival, celebrating Summerland’s agricultural heritage and timed to coincide with a huge cycling event, is in the works for this summer.
Lisa Jaager, manager of the Summerland Chamber of Economic Development and Tourism, said the new three-day festival will be held during the Granfondo Axel Merckx Okanagan cycling event in July.
The cycling event will be held in Penticton and will be headed by Axel Merckx, a 10-time Tour de France participant, Olympic bronze medalist and Belgian National Road Racing champion. It is expected to draw at least 2,500 cyclists this year and it is expected to grow in future years.
Bringing this many cyclists to the region will have potential economic spinoffs, she added.
“Every year there will be a stop in Summerland,” Jaager said.
Jaager said the average age of the participating cyclists is 48 and many of them are able to afford good food and good wine.
“It’s exactly the demographic we want to attract to Summerland,” she said.
The idea of a food and wine festival is not new to Summerland. In earlier years, the Taste of Summerland, a one-day downtown event, featured a variety of local foods. More recently, the Feast of Fields was held in Summerland to promote local agriculture.
“We don’t need to change who we are; we need to celebrate who we are,” Jaager said. “Agri-business is a big part of what’s going to sell Summerland.”
While the chamber will spearhead the new festival, Jaager said other groups and organizations will be involved. These include the Bottleneck Drive wineries, the Community Cultural Development Committee and the newly formed Summerland Merchants’ Association which represents downtown businesses.
Jaager said the festival will require support from the entire community.
“It has to be a community event,” she said. “Lots of different organizations have to come to the table. If everyone takes a little piece of it, we’ll be fine.”
The cycling event and food festival will be held on the weekend of July 10. Jaager said this is an ideal time as it represents a lull in the local tourist activity.
Spearheading the festival is a change in direction for the chamber.
In earlier years, the downtown Business Improvement Association organized a number of small downtown festivals throughout the spring and summer. However, when that association merged with the Summerland Chamber of Commerce to form the present chamber, the festivals were discontinued, with the exception of the Festival of Lights in late November.
Jaager said she does not wish to see the chamber doing all the organization work on future festivals.
“SCEDT’s not going into the business of spending into the double digits on festivals,” she said.