The Future of Waterfront Festival

Another Waterfront Festival has come and gone, this one plagued by several bouts of unpleasant weather.

It was unseasonably chilly. It rained at least three times between Thursday and Sunday. Fortunately, Saturday, a key day for attendance - and of, course, fireworks - was decent.  On Sunday, rain begain almost as soon as the parade wrapped up - probably the worst weather since high winds halted the fireworks in 2008.

So it will be interesting to see how festival finances shake out. We probably won't know that until later this calendar year.

This year, there was no festival director. Instead, Tony Graff, Menominee's city manager - still in his first year on the job - coordinated the festival himself in between all his other duties.

Gotta hand it to Graff. That's no easy feat. But Graff, whom I've met only twice, seems to have a vision for his new city. He sees opportunities for Menominee to shine.

(That's a quality - vision - that every true leader must have. Many previous city managers showed signs of this quality in various degrees - Tony Furton, Michael Cramer, even the ill-fated Richard Goode. Others did not.)

Graff seems to see much potential in Downtown Menominee. Maybe that's why he stepped up to the plate when last year's Waterfront manager, Toni Ihler, declined to continue in the position for a second year. Apparently no one applied for the job when Ihler moved on. (That tells you something.)

After the 2015 festival, former Councilman Leon Felch essentially accused the longtime festival director, Nancy Douglas, of losing money on the event.

The truth is, Waterfront has been losing money for years, if data supplied by the late Tom DeNike is accurate. Douglas took some necessary steps to stop the bleeding; so did Ihler.

I'm betting Graff took it further.

So it will be interesting to see how the event fared this year. (Footage taken by a drone shows parade attendance was less than half of what it was in previous years.)

What will the numbers look like? Who will lead the festival next year?