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Great Lakes Kite Festival ending after this year

Organizers of the Great Lakes Kite Festival say this year will be its last.

GRAND HAVEN, Mich. — This year’s 30th annual Great Lakes Kite Festival will also be the last, the Grand Haven Tribune reports.

The Great Lakes Kite Festival has been a remarkable event for the last 30 years,” festival organizer Steve Negen said in a press release. “We can’t think of a better time to give a distinguished finale performance than on its 30th anniversary.”

This 2018 event is scheduled for May 19-20 at the Grand Haven State Park.

The festival has grown far beyond what it started as more than a quarter-century ago, said Negen, whose downtown Grand Haven store, MACkite, has sponsored and organized the festival from the beginning.

“The kite flyers, the kite groups and the kite community all come together here on the shores of our beautiful lake to put on a show that is always breathtaking,” Negen said.

His wife, Lynn Negen, agreed. “Every year, when I turn the corner coming to the beach, it strikes me again how fabulous our kite-flying friends make this,” she said.

The Negens declined to give specific reasons why the popular festival will end this year, other than to say, “It’s the right time to call it quits.”

“We’re staying positive,” Lynn Negen said. “It’s been a great, great thing for everyone.”

Lynn Negen said the festival started as a sanctioned competition that drew kite teams from all over the globe.

“They would come compete here on their way to the worlds (competition),” she said. “Like ice skating, they would do both a freestyle routine to music and maneuvers. There were specific maneuvers that they had to perform with their kites. Several years ago, we quit being a competition and moved to being an exhibition-only event, and it became a lot more fun for spectators. Watching a technical event isn’t nearly as much fun as watching the performers do a freestyle routine.”

Joy Gaasch, president of the local Chamber of Commerce, lamented the news that the festival is coming to an end.

“I know there are a lot of folks from out of town who love to fly kites, and love to see all the kites in the air who make that their first event of the summer,” she said. “It’s going to be greatly missed.”

Gaasch said events such as the kite festival that take place in the “shoulder seasons” — outside of the area’s normal busy summer months — are a big boost for tourism in the Tri-Cities.

“The events in the spring or the fall really have a way of showing folks a different side of this community,” she said. “It does kick off the season, but more than that, it brings new people into the community who then really consider coming back here at another time. ... I applaud the Negens for what they’ve done over the years.”

Two performers have participated in all 29 previous kite festivals. Eric Wolff of Chicago and Lee Sedgwick of Erie, Pennsylvania, make the trip to Grand Haven each year to demonstrate their kite skills for the crowds. Other kite aficionados design and sew their own kites and ground displays.

A tentative schedule of events for this year’s festival can be found at www.mackite.com. All events are reliant on weather conditions.

This story originally appeared on the Grand Haven Tribune's website.

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