Fayetteville would not be the same without its downtown Dogwood Festival, what for more than four decades has been its marquee event.
Any rumor you may have heard about the festival ending — it’s not so. Look for a return next spring.
The festival’s Board of Directors hired Jim Long Jr., who began work Tuesday. The organization has been without a director since Sarahgrace Mitchell left in May 2023 after a two-year stint to take another job.
Long and I spoke Wednesday morning, and he says he is ready to go.
“I think the future is bright,” says Long, who added, quoting a 1980s pop song, “The future’s so bright we gotta wear some shades.”
New Fayetteville Dogwood director hails from the race car series world
Long’s background has been in race series promotions, and he is a former race car driver. He was owner of Steel Block Bandits Racing Series, a business he sold in April, and he previously worked for six years as a promoter for Fayetteville Motor Speedway.
While the move from the race-car business to street festival may not seem obvious, Long said the two shared common features.
“At the heart of racing, it's really entertainment,” he says. “It’s just entertainment, and so those people in the racing world that are massively successful, they recognize it. The racing may be the vehicle, or the avenue, but you’re entertaining people, and you gotta keep that in mind. And so in the festival world, there are some differences but lots of similarities.”
Dogwood Festival chairman: We will build and develop
Long is a U.S. Army veteran, was raised in Fayetteville and graduated Westover High School and studied at UNC-Pembroke. He said he was still poring over a detailed consultant’s analysis of the Dogwood Festival, its strengths and challenges, and intends to schedule community engagement initiatives. Those have not been hammered out yet; he said he did not want to get ahead of a board meeting scheduled for next Tuesday.
The focus, he said, will be on the main spring festival next year — other related events such as a fall festival will not be scheduled this year. The spring Dogwood Festival, the 42nd edition, was held April 26-28.
R. Andrew Porter, chairman of the Dogwood board, praised Long’s business acumen and said in a news release he would be “an incredible asset to the stability and future of the Festival."
“Moreover, it is our hope that with the hiring of Mr. Long, alongside the unbelievable success of this year’s Dogwood Festival, that we will be able to build and develop a truly memorable Dogwood Festival experience for the community in 2025.”
A quarter-million attendees. Then COVID-19 struck
In both 2018 and 2019, the Dogwood Festival drew around a quarter-million people over three days to the city’s downtown, where they could enjoy music, vendors, carnival rides, food and live music, centered around Festival Park on Ray Avenue.
"It was a sea of people all the way from the front of the stage to the back of the field,” then-director Malia Allen said in 2019, describing the park atmosphere.
Shutdowns from the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, canceling the festival and other public gatherings across the United States and globally. A re-scheduled festival in October was also scrubbed, as well as “Fayetteville After Five” concerts scheduled by festival organizers for that fall.
The festival returned but with smaller numbers. Before this past spring’s edition, a board member told ABC-11 News — an event sponsor — that organizers expected around 100,000 people; the festival had to make budget cuts to save money, losing features such as the VIP tent and a years-long Cork and Fork food and wine event.
New Fayetteville Dogwood director: 'Knowing your target audience'
Long said the board had added new members and praised an experienced team whose expertise he would lean on for the Spring Festival. He said logistically, it was all about managing people, working with marketing partners, putting a plan in place and relying on established protocols.
“Obviously, this is the 43rd year of the festival, so that you have a group of people that know what to do,” Long said. “You just have to have good people around you.”
He said growing the festival meant knowing your target audience.
“You gotta know who you're trying to reach, who you're trying to please,” he said.
Opinion Editor Myron B. Pitts can be reached at mpitts@fayobserver.com or 910-486-3559.
This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: Opinion: Fayetteville Dogwood Festival makes its return, this time with a new leader
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