Gilroy considers return of garlic festival 5 years after mass shooting

GILROY -- Exactly five years ago Sunday, the happy tradition of the Gilroy Garlic Festival was shattered when a lone gunman arrived and began firing into the crowd. The event has never returned and the town has felt its loss. Now, there is talk about bringing the festival back.

On Sunday, there was a crowd at Christmas Hill Park in Gilroy but they came for a soccer tournament not for the garlic. The last weekend in July was the normal time for the garlic festival but that all came crashing down in 2019 when a 19-year-old gunman began shooting at people with an assault-style rifle. The sheer randomness of the attack was shocking and, though police killed the shooter within about a minute's time, three people died and 17 others were wounded.

In the years since, the community has suffered from the loss of the festival.

"I think all entities have struggled," said Cindy Fellows, president of the Gilroy Garlic Festival Association. "The kids, their school programs have struggled. Different organizations can't give back. Just the economic development of our town, of our hotels, of our restaurants. Everything has been affected by not having a festival."

One of those restaurants is the Garlic City Cafe downtown. Owner Socrates Ramos said the festival actually took customers away from him during the annual weekend event but, the rest of the year, he benefited from the exposure the town received.

"That's the whole point, bringing people down to Gilroy," Ramos said. "That way people know where Gilroy is, not just another tiny town. Kind of like my cafe, just a little hole in the wall. Nobody can see it but people still come down!"

Getting the festival back has been a challenge. Some shooting victims sued the city and the city's insurance pool insisted that liability coverage for a festival should be raised from $6 million to $10 million, costing hundreds of thousands more in premiums.

"It really impacted the insurance companies, especially with the added coverage that they want, the excess amount that was required," said councilmember Tom Cline, who served as festival association president after the shooting. "So, that was very difficult to get and, being that we were in an active lawsuit, we couldn't even get it to begin with."

Things are looking up. In November, a judge dismissed the lawsuits, saying the shooting was not a "reasonably forseeable risk." The festival association said they are negotiating with the city to bring down the amount of insurance they need.

"We want the festival back," said Fellows.  "Hands down, we want the festival back."

"We have that vision of seeing this happen again," Cline said. "So, that's what motivates us and it's going to happen. Without a doubt, it's going to happen."

In recent years, the festival had attracted more than 100,000 visitors over its three-day run. The organizers said that, if the festival does return, it will probably start out a lot smaller.

Could it happen as soon as next year? "Maybe," Cline said, "Hey, maybe!"

That would mean a lot at the Garlic City Cafe.

"It's not something small," Ramos said. "It's really something really big, at least for the city. For the city of Gilroy, it's really important so they should do it. They should bring it back!"