WS Chronicle

Tanglewood Park is planning to host North Carolina’s Big Pour, a new craft beverage festival, next year.

The inaugural festival is expected to have about 50 craft breweries, 25 specialty coffee roasters, 10 honey farmers and some craft chi and tea makers. It’ll feature tastings, competitions, community activities, workshops, music, food trucks and arts and crafts vendors. The festival is scheduled for Sept. 14, 2019, in the hopes that it will become a regular annual event.

The festival came about from incentives that Forsyth County offered to attract promoters to Tanglewood. Catbird Art & Events LLC will pay the county a $900 facility rental fee and a $1 per person entrance fee. The county will reimburse Catbird for 50 percent of expenses for law enforcement and EMS support, 25 percent of event insurance and 25 percent of dumpster, portable toilet and light tower rental fees up to $49,100. If the event is held a second year, that reimbursement will be up to $25,000 and by the third year there is no reimbursement, so the festival is expected to sustain itself.

The incentives are an attempt to reinvest the park’s revenues to create a new event there that’ll hopefully grow to become as popular as Tanglewood’s North Carolina Wine Festival, which is in its 19th year and draws 15,000 to 25,000 people annually. The agreement with the county has already set Aug. 29, 2020, as the possible date for the second Big Pour.

County Parks Marketing and Events Coordinator Jessica Sanders told commissioners at a briefing earlier this month that the festival hopes to tap into the growing interest in craft beer in the state. North Carolina has 245 craft breweries, more than any other state in the South. Craft beer has a $791,000 economic impact in the state. She said about 3,000 to 5,000 attendees are expected in the festival’s first year.

“We’re excited to bring something fresh to Forsyth County and anticipate it growing into the most well know, best attended and go-to craft beverage festival in the Southeast,” said Sanders.

County Commissioners plan to vote today, Aug. 16, on authorizing the expenditure of county funds for the first festival’s incentives.