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CCDA cancels Chalk Art Festival, Downtown Car Show

Feb 16, 2018 | 10:30 AM

 

MEDICINE HAT, AB — The City Centre Development says it’s cancelling two popular summer events for 2018.

The Sunshine Chalk Art Festival and the Downtown Car Show will not be hosted by the CCDA this summer.

“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,” says Jeremy Silver, chair of the CCDS’s Board of Directors, in a news release.

The news release adds the Chalk Art Festival was the organization’s most expensive event, and added the street closures made it harder for the general public to park and access stores downtown.

The Car Show was briefly cancelled in 2017 to reschedule it around other similar events, and the release said reallocating funds and create a different event made more sense that duplicating the same event held elsewhere in the city.

The CCDA says it’s taking the money allocated for both events and will be using them to enhance or expand other CCDA events, such as the downtown Chili Cook-off, the Easter Egg Hunt and Midnight Madness. It adds it’s also hoping to reorganize the Chalk Art Festival to make it “cost-efficient and friendlier to downtown business owners as well as the general public,” the release states.