Dear friends of the Eastside Heritage Center and the Bellevue Strawberry Festival:
With no small amount of sadness, the board of the Eastside Heritage Center has decided not to produce the Bellevue Strawberry Festival in 2019. There is some chance that an outside event producer will pick up the event in the future.
The Bellevue Strawberry Festival has been an unqualified success over the years. In many ways the Eastside Heritage Center has become a victim of that success. As the festival became bigger and more popular, we knew we needed to up our game and professionalize the production to ensure quality, safety and an overall great festival experience. These requirements began to get way out in front of our capacities as a relatively small non-profit community heritage organization.
The success of the Bellevue Strawberry Festival has been due, in large part, to the quality of the vendors, musicians, suppliers, sponsors and other partners we have been able to attract. For your support we thank you. We recognize that the event has a great deal of community and brand equity and that it may be possible to restart it in the future, as the same great festival but with a far smaller role for the Eastside Heritage Center. If anything changes, our loyal friends will be the first to know.
And one last shout-out to Heather Trescases, who built the Strawberry festival from the ground up, and to Lexi and rest of the EHC staff and volunteers who put in so much time and effort to make it a success.
Thank you again for your support, and we hope everyone can fill that weekend with another great event.
