Fall Fest 2022
 | Author:
Nancy Marks
Nancy Marks: MT43 News Secretary and News Editor |
Hooray! Townsend’s annual Fall Fest celebration is just around the corner. Festivities start at 4:30 next Friday, September 30, and continue through the October 1-2 weekend. The impact on the local economy every year is not just a ripple, it is a wave.
Produced by the Rotary Club of Townsend, the event last year netted $57,200, according to club president Jeff Langlinais. “Almost all the money goes into community projects, especially for the county’s kids,” he said. Townsend Rotary either funds or organizes eighteen youth programs, including scholarships. The money also pays for monthly Bingo at the hospital and the Senior Citizen Christmas holiday dinner and light tour.
The event, including the Sunday car show, draws an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 people. Local businesses and those in surrounding towns and cities, from Bozeman to Helena, and in between, benefit from sales of lodging, food, gas, and merchandise, says Laura Obert, who for years has supervised the Fall Fest vendors. “That money gets turned into updates and renovations by our businesses. It also helps our main street shops sustain their cash flow until the Christmas season. If we didn’t have that influx of money and activity, it would be hard for those shops to keep going,” she explained.
More than twenty years ago, business leaders concerned about the economic lull between tourist season and Christmas came to Rotary to float the idea of a fall event. Rotary agreed to take on the project. “It began with a cooler of beer, a dozen vendors and a tiny car show on one block of Pine Street. I was one of the vendors,” Laura said.
Fall Fest exploded into a full festival when Rotarian Chuck Harvey was the chair and the band, “The Clintons,” from Helena was the Sunday headliner.“We learned to keep people at the event through Sunday by providing upscale bands. Featuring them made all the difference,” she said. By then the car show had spilled over to Broadway Street. It now features upwards of 300 vintage and muscle cars.
Fall Fest would not go on if it weren’t for sponsors, vendors and grants. Rotarians Patrick Plantenberg and Bill Kearns, as well as many others, donate time asking businesses and organizations for sponsorships. In 2021, there were 90 sponsorships. The sponsorships pay for the upfront costs of putting on the festival. This year Pat set a goal of $60,000 in sponsorships.
About 130 vendors have signed up this year to take advantage of three days of front-row crowds somewhere between 8,000 and 10,000 people. “We are able to consistently attract so many vendors and people to our free admission to the event, “Laura said.
