By Stephen Tait
NEWBURYPORT — City festivals continue to go upscale.
On the heels of last year's Yankee Homecoming's first juried craft show designed to weed out lower-end vendors, the spring festival once known as the Salmagundi Festival, then the Arts, Flowers and All That Jazz Festival, has now become Newburyport Spring Fest and will feature fewer roadside vendors — and only those who make the grade.
Ann Ormond, president of the Greater Newburyport Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said next month's event will feature a juried craft show with fewer craft vendors, who will offer higher-end wares.
"It is a higher-end fine art, fine craft show, hopefully to appeal to a broader audience, broader appeal from 50 miles out," Ormond said. "It has a nice Newburyport feeling to it."
The booths for vendors will be limited to Inn and Pleasant streets, and State Street will be void of the booths.
Juried craft shows limit the number of vendors to those chosen by a committee — or jury — that is formed and tasked with poring over vendor applications to ensure that what a certain craft maker or artist creates is what fits with a particular show or festival.
Kim Gobbi, owner of The Studio, a store that is based around high-end crafts, is one of the jury members for Spring Fest. She said the 10 or so committee members worked hard to come up with vendors appropriate for the city, to match up well with the retail stores already in town.
She said this year will also provide the first-ever retail and restaurant tie-in, with local stores participating in the shows by providing specials. The event is May 25 and 26.
"We focused on bringing in quality, beautiful items and works that you would find here ordinarily," she said. "We want to make it a part of the downtown."
The higher-end craft shows may become the way of life for such festivals in Newburyport.
At last year's Yankee Homecoming, event planners focused on making a higher-end show, which also included a jury to comb through the list of applicants. Kathleen Bailey, who organized the event, said at the time that the year before was a disappointment because of the quality of the wares.
At this year's Spring Fest, Ormond said the chamber also, for the first time in a decade, increased the price to enter the show from $250 to $300. The show will have about 30 to 40 crafters.
"We wanted to try to make some changes to upgrade it a little more," Ormond said. "It has a new logo, a new look, a new feel."
Gobbi said part of that change is also a uniformed look among the vendors. She said all are required to have white tents and be in straight, even lines.
"It will look very clean and nice," she said.
