Longtime tradition, Venetian festival, has been discontinued

St. Joseph’s Venetian festival is coming to a close after a citywide surey showed 70 percent of its residents had mild to strong objections to the continuation of the festival, apparently a victim of its own success, reports the Herald-Palladium.

Attempts to come up with plans for a scaled-back festival did not work and the Venetian Festival Board of Directors and Senior Membership voted to dissolve.

Excerpt:

About 63,000 people attended the festival in 1997, according to a 1998 Michigan State University study. About 58 percent of them came from outside the area, and the festival brought in about $1.7 million to the local economy that year, the study showed.

For more, please read the rest of the story.

Source: Herald-Palladium