The Sandcastle Success Story

In just nine years the Sandcastle Festival has become one of the best attended, talked about and written about summer venues on this part of the Northeast coast.

From a very humble, quiet, somewhat stumbling and fumbling beginning, the festival has grown into a massive event of the first order and as such, all future efforts must be well orchestrated, funded and carried out.

Last weekend’s festival attendance was over the top, especially the crowd that came out all day Saturday and culminating with the enormous crowd that filled every portion of Revere Beach for the fireworks display.

That crowd was estimated at more than 100,000 people and many an old timer remarked they hadn’t seen a crowd like this at the beach since the 1940’s.

Some said the crowd rivaled the 100thanniversary beach extravaganza that brought so many to Revere in the 1990’s.

It is the mass of people that powered the entire event, that and the sculptures, which has turned the festival into such a major venue.

The time will come when organizers of the event learn how to fully maximize the value of so many visitors.

Not enough can be said for the notion that this is a destination event, that is to say, Revere as a destination has not been something in play for many, many years.

The beach always attracts crowds in the summer but it is the festival that has changed the face of the beach in July for almost a decade.

Next year’s event has the potential to be a massive affair, an event so carefully planned and orchestrated that when all is said and done, event organizers have a substantial profit to fund off-shoots of the event so that it lives throughout the year all over the city and in the area.

With the artful use of the Internet, with the continued care of those who serve the event without pay and with the help of media of every kind and word of mouth, this festival will take on a new persona.

It has the possibility of becoming a once a year event that generates millions of dollars in revenues for those serving food, retailing certain items, and for entertainment venues which might possibly be of so great a reputation that thousands would gladly pay for a ticket to attend a festival concert.

The artistic base of the event is what should never be toyed with. If possible, it should be expanded with sculpting lessons for kids of all ages and even for adults and on and on.

The ninth annual Sandsclupting Festival was an enormous success.

We have not heard a bad word uttered by anyone about the Festival, which has the ability to become something like the Empire State Building of events in this part of New England.

Everyone should be proud of the festival.

It was the real thing this year.

Next year’s could be the prize.

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