CAPITOLA >> The popular and recently defunct Capitola Begonia Festival is set to be replaced this fall with the new Capitola Beach Festival.
On Thursday night, the Capitola City Council voted to approve a special permit for the Sept. 29-30 event, with Councilwoman Stephanie Harlan voting against the project.
Drawing in many organizers of its predecessor and beyond, the new festival is planned to continue activities such as sand castle and horseshoe contests, a fishing derby and sidewalk chalk art events. Even the pivotal float parade down Soquel Creek would be revived, replacing flowers with decorative lighting. The Capitola Beach Festival, as planned, would primarily differ with its plans to move its hallmark nautical barge parade from morning to sunset, add a 3-mile footrace and throw its party at the end, rather than beginning, of September.
“The business community has now supported this fully. We’re locked and loaded and ready to go,” Beach Festival committee member Dave Peyton told the council. “In fact, we’re on time and we’re on budget. If it were me, it seems that a lighted boat parade would enhance the crowds on a Saturday evening and it’s got to benefit our merchants in some way.”
Capitola’s former Labor Day weekend Begonia Festival retired in 2017 after 65 years, when its begonia bulb source ceased selling the flowers. The new festival would introduce a 3-mile race, in partnership with the annual Wharf to Wharf 6-mile race. Organizers plan to cap the morning event at 5,000 participants, the course running from Live Oak down into Capitola Village.
Councilman Jacques Bertrand summarized some of the feedback he had gathered from polling some residents living along the Soquel Creek riverwalk, saying a majority offered support to the new event, though some suggested a trial run of one year.
“People would like to see if it’s well managed, good outcomes, people are happy and stuff like that, that’s sort of a comment that I received,” Bertrand said. “I think you’re addressing one thing that did come up quite a bit. It’s mostly based on residents’ experience with the Begonia Festival, in particular, where a lot of people have drunk a lot and they’re all wandering around and stuff like that.”
Police Chief Terry McManus said First Alarm security guards will keep revelers off of the trestle bridge. Four Santa Cruz Fire Department lifeguards and parade marshals will be on hand to keep revelers safe, and creekside lighting will be extinguished at the parade’s end, by about 8:30 p.m. The maximum number of parade barges on the creek will be 12, McManus said.
McManus said he believed many of the concerns raised by the council in March, when the beach festival was first introduced, had been addressed.
“I’m cautious about it,” Harlan said after hearing McManus’ presentation. “I don’t like the idea of having a nighttime activity down there. I’m just very concerned about public safety.”
In a letter to the council, resident Kay Wood wrote that she says “no” to festivals in her town.
“Years ago they were great fun but the area is just too crowded now to invite large crowds of people to any area of the county,” Wood wrote. “The fairgrounds are the only reasonable venue for any ‘event.’”
Mayor Mike Termini, who is listed at the festival’s board president on its city special event permit, voted with his peers but did not comment during the item’s discussion.
