The festival, which will take place May 1 from 9 a.m. until 3 p.m., has already begun its search for vendors. Area businesses are invited to buy one or more spaces on East Main Street and the adjacent parking lot until April 15.
“We’re always looking for new things if someone has something unique and different that they want to do,” said Carol Brown, chairman of the City Beautification Committee, which sponsors the event. “Everybody’s wanting to get out, especially now after the winter we’ve had. They’re ready for their gardens.”
Spring Daze started in 2004 as a gardening festival because Thomasville had no real spring event to bring people downtown.
“It was just a way to kick off spring,” said Tourism Director Mark Scott. “People could buy the plants that needed to be planted at that time of year. I think it filled a niche that Thomasville didn’t have.”
With free admission and a rain or shine date, the event has expanded since its origins of mostly food and plant vendors to include live music and stands boasting the works of various arts and craftsmen.
Other organizations set up informational booths, such as Relay For Life’s stand on cancer awareness. The hospital even hosts a Spring Daze 5K in conjunction with the downtown festival.
Also together with Spring Daze, Thomasville Tourism will hold the first Chainsaw Sculpting Competition in hopes of capitalizing on festival crowds, which numbered between 1,500 and 2,000 last year despite the rain.
And the event certainly has a draw to bring people out no matter the weather, Brown said.
“It’s not a traveling circuit,” she said. “The unique thing about all of our vendors is they’re considered local. So you’re basically putting back into our local economy.”
Even though a few vendors travel from out of town — one woman from Virginia and others from Salisbury — Brown said the majority of businesses spring from Thomasville and the surrounding areas.
“They like the uniqueness of it because it’s not very commercialized, and it’s things that you can put in your garden,” she said.
In a community that loves to garden and work outdoors, a festival like Spring Daze fits right in with local culture, Scott said.
“It’s kind of folksy,” he said. “You come in, you interact with the vendors, you see all the different things from hanging baskets to bedding plants. I think we’re a community of people that likes to get out, work in our yard.”
It’s also a social event. Scott said that local residents tend to thrive on the feeling of community Spring Daze embodies.
“I think people like getting out, being among the people, supporting events that groups put out there,” he said. “Spring Daze typifies the type of thing that Tourism wants to help promote — a good organization that tries to help the city and bring people downtown.”
Staff Writer Erin Wiltgen can be reached at 888-3576, or at newsdesk@tvilletimes.com
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