Tonawanda, N.Y. (WBEN) - A change is coming to Canal Fest of the Tonawandas in 2025, as officials in the City of Tonawanda have formally voted to shorten the event on their side of the Erie Canal by two days.
Tonawanda Mayor John White attributes the decision from city officials on Tuesday to safety concerns, as well as the cost of the annual event on the city.
"How can we say no to 150,000 people that have an opportunity to walk through our city and we get to show our wares? It's an exciting event, I love it," said White on Wednesday during an appearance on "A New Morning" on WBEN. "We don't have that type of police force with the huge numbers. North Tonawanda is twice the size of ours, so they can do what we can't. The cost of our police, any overtime, it kills them, it crushes them."
"It's just that our city, at 15,100 people strong, we can't afford an eight-day event and sell it, and create safety and everything for that event. We saw what happened in New Orleans, I dread that. I don't want to be the mayor in that seat that allows that to happen, and neither does Austin [Tylec]. So we are taking every effort that we can to make sure that everybody is safe, but also our officers, that they have each other's backs and we feel comfortable with that."
White feels six days to host the event with the City of North Tonawanda is good common ground this upcoming July.
"We will make sure to look at our expenses at the end and see if it works. But eight days is too much for us," White noted. "We had the rides for 39-out-of-40 of the years. So moving the rides and all the games of chance over into North Tonawanda was a good decision on our part."
The decision on Tuesday certainly came with officials in North Tonawanda being fully aware of what Tonawanda was planning for this year's event.
"We always communicate, Austin and myself and the Council. We have a open line of communication, we work with each other," White said. "We do 4th of July together, we do Canal Fest together, we do quite a bit. We did the ball drop this year, again, together. So we communicated with them as we moved along, they understood. And we're going to work it between the two cities and Canal Fest, and make it work."
Rick Maier, vice president of Canal Fest, says the change doesn't really affect the event directly, but it does affect the nonprofit organizations, who will have two less days to raise money.
"The bridge will be closed going over into North Tonawanda, and we will have vendors on the bridge," Maier said in an interview with WBEN. "The city is letting the nonprofit organizations set up on the weekend, so they don't have to take time off of work to set up during the week. But there will be no vending of any kind going on until Tuesday night, when the parade comes through."
Not only will the rides be in North Tonawanda this coming year, Maier says Canal Fest will be cutting back a little bit on the entertainment on the Tonawanda side.
"The last couple of years, we've had entertainment on that side for the full eight days. That will be cut back to six," he said. "As far as the actual festival itself, all the big events still remain. We're kicking off with the parade. There wasn't really a whole lot going on in Tonawanda until Tuesday, anyhow, so it's not really a big change for us."
And because the rides are over in North Tonawanda, now the section of Niagara Street in Tonawanda is open to hosting other kinds of events during Canal Fest.
"This year, we're bringing in the Great American Lumberjacks Show. They're going to be there Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and put on nine different shows. That'll be kind of cool, going back to our heritage as the Lumber City, the whole bit," Maier noted. "We're trying to do a couple things, which I can't really say yet because I don't have many commitments, but we're trying to get something going out there Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday also. So we're making the best of what we got."