All-volunteer effort kicks event into high gear

SANDPOINT — Never mind the shoulder season of winter or a regional economy struggling to get traction. Sandpoint merchants, restaurateurs, artists and performers are picking themselves up by the bootstraps to drive business on their own.

From Jan.14-18, an all-volunteer effort will light things up as Sandpoint Winter Carnival 2010 packs the dark days with family activity. This new version — think of it as Winter Carnival 2.0 — puts a different spin on a wintertime event that has long been a local favorite.

Without the efforts of a few core volunteers, however, the carnival might easily have slipped away into the annals of fond memory. The event began to shrink when the snow-sculpting competition was discontinued several years ago, with other key events following suit.

“After the snow-sculpting went away, the main thing was the parade,” said Kathleen Hyde, executive director for the Downtown Sandpoint Business Association. “The Chamber couldn’t remain in the lead for that, because of lack of infrastructure, so the DSBA took the parade over in ‘08.”

But with such a limited number of volunteers — barely enough to count on one hand — the logistics of mounting a parade proved too much to handle and, by 2009, that component fell away, as well. Any thoughts of dropping the event altogether were cut short, though, as at least two business owners demanded that the downtown tradition remain in place.

“Steve Meyer pounded his fist on the table and said, ‘We will not let this die,” recalled Chris Bessler, president of the DSBA and founder of Keokee Co. Publishing in Sandpoint.

“As I remember it, it was me and Tanya Sleep, of Sleep’s Cabins, who really pushed for it to keep going,” said Meyer, co-owner of the Pend d’Oreille Winery. “The parade was always great fun, but it’s complex to manage. Every event has to evolve with its constituency and the audience we’re hitting now is families and youth.”

Any holes left by the absence of the two former main attractions have been readily filled by new additions such as the rail jam, downtown bonfire, fire dancers, a Winter Art Trek and shopping and dining specials throughout the carnival (see sidebar).

“These events attract a lot of people,” Meyer said, “and they keep them around all night.”

Last year’s rail jam pulled approximately 1,000 people to Main Street over the course of a few hours, as skiers and snowboarders showed off their most radical acrobatic moves in a freestyle contest. This year, rail jam organizer Ben Spinney of Spinneybent Rails promises more action on a larger, more intricate course.

“We’re trucking in a bunch of snow for an urban, downhill rail jam in kind of a street set-up that’s 30 feet high and nearly 100 feet long,” he said. “It’s going to attract up to 60 of the best riders in the area and I think it’ll be even bigger than last year, which was excellent.”

The rail jam will be illuminated by two bonfires on either side of the course, located near Jeff Jones Square, and local fundraising groups will sell hot cocoa to help ward off the cold.

One short block away outside the Pend d’Oreille Winery, Bio-Luminesce — a fire-dancing troupe founded by Travis Engle — will precede the Friday night rail jam with a performance featuring interlacing arcs and circles of flame created by “fire toys” using biodiesel — a non-toxic biodegradable fuel processed from vegetable oils.  

Merchants and restaurant owners plan to make the most of the off-season traffic by offering special pricing and promotions of their own.

In Shop Around Sandpoint, participating stores will stamp “passports” that enter shoppers into a drawing for season passes to The Festival at Sandpoint, a stay at the La Quinta and a $100 Zany Zebra gift certificate, among other prizes.

Dine Around Sandpoint has 15 local restaurants strutting their stuff with special winter carnival menus at set prices ranging from $15-$30. Every diner will be entered in a drawing for a grand prize of one meal out every month for a year. The concept was introduced by Claudia Dick, owner of 41 South across the Long Bridge and co-founder of the Trinity waterfront restaurants at City Beach and Willow Bay.

“I read something online about ‘restaurant week’ in San Diego and then found that there were a lot of these events all over the country,” she said. “They’re usually held during the in-between times, when things are slow.

“My thought was that the next couple of months are pretty bleak for restaurants and that something like Dine Around Sandpoint could help create business,” she added. “By tying it into the Sandpoint Winter Carnival, we can let more people know there are some great deals out there and get more people to venture out and try some new places.”

The financial impact of a shoulder season celebration such as winter carnival can be considerable, as evidenced by the nation’s oldest event — held in St. Paul, Minn., since 1886 — which annually contributes nearly $4 million to that city’s economy, according to its Web site. Run a Google search under the words “winter carnival” and tiny little Sandpoint, Idaho, shows up immediately after the top-listed St. Paul festivities. The DSBA president, whose company specializes in leveraging the power of the Web, sees that as a huge opportunity.

“Personally, I’d like the memories I have of Winter Carnival, with the bonfire and all the fun activities, to continue,” Bessler said. “That’s why the DSBA has stepped up to make more activities available this year.”

Volunteer Lisa Gerber, owner of the Sandpoint marketing firm Big Leap Creative, agreed with Meyer that, in order to survive, Winter Carnival had to be rethought and updated to fit the times.

“We felt like the whole event needed to be revamped to create new energy,” she said. “This year, we feel lucky just to have it at all, but we have big goals for it to grow and become a signature event for Sandpoint. We plan to keep layering on to make it bigger in future years.”