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Organizers of the South Carolina Tobacco Festival and Heritage Music and Arts Festival already were calling the event a success even before the main attraction took the stage Saturday in Lake City.
This year, the combination of the two festivals brought the biggest crowd Lake City has seen in years.
“For the last years it’s been a struggle to put this event on,” Operations and coordinator for the event Debra Lane said. “In the 80s it brought 30,000 people, but over time it just got harder and harder.”
Without any funding from tobacco companies, the city along with the Lake City Chamber of Commerce, the Lake City Community Foundation, the Ron McNair Memorial Committee and small business owners breathed life back into a festival that was almost choked to death over time for lack of funding and interest.
The Heritage Arts Festival was added to the Tobacco Festival to give it a boost, and the turnout showed they complemented each other nicely.
Brian Kennedy helped to assemble the committee for the event.
“It first started as an idea to get business and the community together to help promote Lake City,” he said. “Lake City is determined to buck the current economic trends. We aren’t sitting still. We’re trying to more forward despite what’s going on with the economy.”
Dozens of vendors, political candidates and businesses from Lake City and the surrounding area descended on the are to help give the city a much-needed boost.
Genene Harley, owner of Harley’s Kitchen in Florence, a vendor and supporter of the festival said for her and her staff it’s a blessing to be able to come to the festival.
“We’ve been here all week and it’s just been more and more people coming everyday. It’s really a blessing for us to be out here and we’re doing something to try and help people see more of what’s going on in Lake City,” she said.
Part of adding the arts festival to the tobacco festival was getting a nationally known act to headline.
The Tobacco Festival and Heritage Music Arts Festival events started Thursday in the Lake City town square and was punctuated by a performance by musician Uncle Kracker downtown Saturday night.
He was selected because of his popularity in the area and his interest in supporting small towns, Kennedy said.
“He was just a perfect fit for us. We also brought in some of the best musical acts from South Carolina we could get” he said.
Performances also included Ten Toes Up, The Movement and local favorite Jeffery Allen Edwards.
Hector Liendo, owner of 1st Born Productions, and his son, Hector Jr., came 1,423 miles from Texas to run production for the Heritage Music and Arts Festival.
“We were more than happy to come. They (the organizers) and Lake City have the same set of mind as us,” Liendo said. “You help someone succeed. Then the person who succeeds helps the other ones up with them.”
The festival is the start for the changes planned for downtown Lake City, which will feature a $4 million renovation of the Bean Market. The square where locals sang along with Uncle Kracker will become a wooded green and there are plans for the utility lines to eventually all go underground.
source: scnow.com