Cailla Prisco
Student Life Editor
Pumpkin Festival has always been a New Hampshire tradition and brought thousands of people from around the country into Cheshire County. Since the riots that broke out during the 2014 Pumpkin Festival involved mainly out of state students, the city of Keene voted to discontinue the event until last year in 2017, when it made its comeback.
The problem with this so called “comeback” is that it was severely diminished, and had not involved nearly a fraction of people that it used to bring in. With Keene being a small town, local businesses thrived off major events like Pumpkinfest, increasing their profits when tourists come to town for the weekend.
According to Valley News in past years, Central Square would fill up with an estimated eighty thousand people back in 2006. This brought in profit for all businesses in Keene and in surrounding towns.
Cynthia Levitt was an owner of a local primitive store called Sugar and Spice in Fitzwilliam and Troy NH.
According to Levitt, ‘PumpkinFest’ was where many local businesses made most of their profit. “My business tripled in that one weekend than it does in a month and once that was taken away, my business inevitably wouldn’t be able to survive another five years or so,” Levitt said.
Levitt’s business wasn’t the only one affected by this loss of income, Tracy Thompson Keating Gunn is the owner of Keene’s local candy store named Life Is Sweet.
According to Keating Gunn, “The Pumpkinfests that were held before the riots compared to the modified Pumpkinfest put on in 2017 was radically different and business went down about eighty percent.”
When both store owners were asked about the reputation of Keene and if Pumpkin Festival should be brought back to its former glory, both answered yes.
Keating Gunn said, “Yes! We should own this…and let everyone in the world know that this is not who we are and doesn’t represent us at all.”
Elizabeth Dragon is the city manager of Keene and when asked about PumpkinFest and what it would be like this year she answered, “It will be the same scale as last year, their will be no extra vendors allowed, it will be held on a Sunday and not a Saturday, it will be family oriented and small in nature and we wanted the town to realize that it would not be the same event that it was.”
Keene State College and the city of Keene are working concurrently making sure that this year’s pumpkin festival remains small and geared towards children and families. As for the future of Keene’s businesses, the county has lost a very profitable weekend and it will never be the same.
Cailla Prisco can be contacted
at cprisco@kscequinox.com
