Portland’s annual spring fling, the Rose Festival, is back this year with parades, events and the City Fair, and a new goal: Help with the revitalization of downtown.
Reinvigorating the downtown core of Oregon’s biggest city has become a state-wide project in the wake of the COVID pandemic.
“We got a lot of feedback that the parade is fun and City Fair is great,” said Nick Brodnicki, chief operating officer for the festival. “But how are we helping support the downtown core besides our events?”
So that’s what the Rose Festival has set out to do. Taking a page from the city’s efforts to bring shoppers into the core during the holiday season, the Rose Festival created “Starry Nights.”
“Starry Nights” is a small business event where people will have a chance to win prizes just for entering participating stores during the weekend of the CareOregon Starlight Parade, from Friday, May 31 to Sunday, June 2.”
“We want folks downtown. We want them celebrating. We want them staying overnight,” Brodnicki said.
The festival hopes to make that weekend “the biggest economic impact weekend in the entire year,” he said.
Bringing people back into the city, and reestablishing downtown Portland as a hub of entertainment, food and shopping, lines up with the festival’s 2024 theme, “Dream Forward.”
“Dream Forward” also resonates with another goal of the festival: Create a festival that reflects the diversity of Portland.
“Yes, we’re the Rose Festival and yes, we have a floral heritage that we pay homage to, but the reality of Portland is that the ‘City of Roses’ stands for so much more now,” Brodnicki said. “If you want to take the metaphor literally as possible, you know you don’t just plant a rose bush by itself, right? You’ve got to garden of things and we want to be able to showcase as many people, places, groups as possible.”
Across the parades and fair, he said, the festival will “underwrite or support” more than 120 community cultural affinity groups, up from 80 or 90 last year. On stages at the City Fair, 80% of the acts will feature people of color and/or women.
Look no further than Jenny Nguyen, the Grand Marshal for the Starlight Parade, to see the realization of the festival’s goals.
Nguyen owns The Sports Bra, which began as possibly the world’s only sports bar showing exclusively women’s sports and two years in announced plans to franchise with funding support from Serena William’s husband and Reddit co-founder, Alexis Ohanian.
In just two years, The Sports Bra has become a Portland institution, an example for anyone hoping to start a business with purpose in the city.
The Rose Festival officially starts on Friday, May 24, with fireworks and opening ceremonies at Tom McCall Waterfront Park. That Friday will also mean the opening of CityFair, and the classic carnival rides of the midway.
One-day admission to CityFair for everyone seven and older is $11.99. The fair, which this year will include Oregon Brewer’s Festival all three weekends along with food and entertainment, runs Friday, May 24 to Monday, May 27, Friday, May 31, to Sunday, June 2, and Friday, June 7, to Sunday, June 9.
The festival will feature three major parades. The CareOregon Starlight Parade starts at 8 p.m. on Saturday, June 1, in downtown Portland. The Fred Meyer Junior Parade passes through the Hollywood District beginning at 1 p.m. on Wednesday, June 5. And the Grand Floral Parade on the east side starts at 10 a.m. on Saturday, June 8.
As for the other stand-bys of the festival, those are back, too. The treasure hunt begins Sunday, May 26. Fleet Week runs from Wednesday, June 5, to Sunday, June 9, and the dragon boat race takes place on the same Saturday as the Grand Floral Parade.
Visit rosefestival.org for more information.
– Lizzy Acker covers life and culture and writes the advice column Why Tho? Reach her at 503-221-8052, lacker@oregonian.com or @lizzzyacker
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