Bret Schanzenbach
President & CEO
Carlsbad Chamber of Commerce

2019 was a great year for the Carlsbad Chamber of Commerce in that we celebrated 45 years of hosting the twice annual Carlsbad Village Faire. 2020, however, was NOT a great year as we all grappled with a global pandemic that took countless lives, destroyed businesses and shuttered events as diverse as March Madness, Comic Con and our Faire. But as another sign that life is starting to return some semblance of 2019 normalcy, we are happy to announce the return of the Carlsbad Village Faire on July 25, 2021.

The Carlsbad Village Faire was started in 1974 by Keith Kennedy. Keith created an events company called Kennedy and Associates. And while Kennedy and Associates still manages the faire for us today, the torch within the company has passed twice. First in 1994 Keith passed the leadership to his son-in-law, Brian Roth, and in 2016 Brian passed the leadership off to Rick Bauer. And the Faire has done nothing but shine throughout the 45 years of existence as it grew to become the largest single-day street fair in the country.

Of course, 2021 will look a little different. First, the Faire is usually the first Sunday of May and the first Sunday of November. The November date is still set accordingly, but due to COVID restrictions, we knew back in January that a May event was not practical. So we made the decision to postpone to late July with the hopes that the COVID vaccine would assist us all in defeating the virus and getting back to life as we once knew it.

Secondly, we will forego a few things that usually create over “gatherings” of crowds at events like these. We hope this will be the only Faire where we have to do this, but we have decided to not host a beer garden, a kids’ zone with carnival rides or a performance stage. Out of an abundance of caution, we want to minimize staging up places that will foster crowding. However, we will still have a food court with some great, delicious food vendors.

Lastly, our vendor footprint will be smaller for this first event back. As you can imagine, we had to give a lot of refunds in 2020 to vendors when we couldn’t host our events. We still expect a lot of your favorite vendors to be there, but it will most certainly be a bit smaller than we are all used to. This will be our “baby steps” back to our real event (stay tuned for November’s Village Faire).

We hope you all come out and support this event and these vendors. The event industry took quite a hit last year. The San Diego Tourism Authority reported that 77,000 jobs were lost locally due to events that were canceled. Before the pandemic, 1 in 8 San Diegans were employed in some facet of this industry sector. During 2020 there was a $9.9B loss of revenue in the event industry in San Diego.

When I asked Rick Bauer what it will mean to all these vendors and to his team to have the Carlsbad Village Faire back up and running, he shared that “it gives those of us in the event planning industry great hope that our lives and businesses will be restored to normalcy. It has been a long 13 months since Kennedy and Associates and its family of entrepreneurial artisans, crafters and businesses have been able to make a living. We are so ready to celebrate the opening of all of our businesses.”

We hope you come out and support the event. Because the event is in July instead of May, parking will be even more challenging. With that mind, please use one of our shuttle lots. We have added more shuttle buses so you won’t have to wait to get a ride. Shuttle lots are at The Shoppes at Carlsbad and the Poinsettia Train Station. Lastly, unless something changes, we expect that mask-wearing will still be encouraged. So please do your part to stop the spread. Who’s ready to toast the town?! See you on July 25.