Gazette Communications will be Freedom Festival presenting sponsor; RibFest joins lineup

Get ready for fireworks to return downtown, and make sure you bring an appetite for barbecue.

Freedom Festival fireworks will return downtown in 2010 after two years away, and the festival will roll out a new barbecue event that will directly compete with the BBQ Roundup, officials announced Tuesday.

The new Ribfest, which will be in the Greene Square Park area, is scheduled for June 24 through June 27, the same dates as the BBQ Roundup over on the parking lot at Eighth Avenue SE. Both events expect to have eight vendors.

The Gazette Family of Companies, which owns The Gazette and KCRG-TV9, is the presenting sponsor for the 2010 Freedom Festival. The festival is scheduled for June 13 through July 4.

The Gazette Family will sponsor the festival “to celebrate the return of Freedom Festival to downtown Cedar Rapids, and in gratitude for the continued support of our readers, audience and business partners,” said Chuck Peters, CEO of Gazette Communications.

Gazette Communications will provide in-kind donations of printing and distribution of brochures, coupon books and other materials, said Janet Wilhelm, executive director of the Freedom Festival.

“It's a ton of in-kind, that in the festival world is huge,” Wilhelm said.

Peters referenced The Gazette's reorganization at the news conference to announce the sponsorship. He said the company is trying to find names for the underlying organizations that tie all its products together - products like GazetteOnline.com, Hoopla, EdgeBusiness Magazine, The Penny Saver, KCRG.com, IowaPrepSports.com, Iowa.com and CorridorCareers.com

“We're going to be looking for great ideas on how to name these organizations,” Peters said.

The last presenting sponsor for the Freedom Festival was cable company Mediacom, in 2008. The festival was muted in 2008 by the flood, and the fireworks were shot off at Kirkwood Community College the last two years.

“It's not quite the same” as downtown, Wilhelm said.

Scott Schoenike, director of the U.S. Cellular Center, which runs the BBQ Roundup, said he doesn't understand why the Freedom Festival would start a second barbecue festival.

He said Freedom Festival officials asked him if they could take over the BBQ Roundup, and he said no, because it's a profitable event. Now the Freedom Festival is rolling out Ribfest.

“It doesn't make much sense to do two barbecue festivals on the same weekend,” Schoenike said. “All it's going to do is wreck both events.”