Potential for bad weather prompts some freedom fest changes

A forecast for nearly a week's worth of heavy rain has organizers with the Cedar Rapids Freedom Festival a bit more concerned than usual.  And it's one reason for a change in the first big events of the Freedom Fest taking place this weekend.

Rockers Peter Cetera and Jimi Jamison are set to perform at Kirkwood Community College for the Classic Rock Concert show on Friday night.  That's followed by the Patriotic Pops Concert set for Saturday.  But organizers  moved the stage from the usual site at a grassy field on the community college campus.  Workers, instead, set up on a parking lot next to Johnson Hall.

Russ Oviatt, Cedar Rapids Freedom Festival Marketing Director, said the normal site at Kirkwood was too wet from earlier rains to consider setting up the stage there this year.  But if bad weather does flare up on the day of the shows, having the event on a hard surface may keep the concerts from becoming a total washout.

“If during the day it rains and stops even a half hour before the show is to go on-we can go.  So it's not automatic if it rained today (Friday) we've got to cancel.  We have some flexibility,” Oviatt said.

Oviatt said the pops concert scheduled at the same site Saturday night can get postponed until Sunday if weather interferes with the show.  But due to scheduling, the rock show either goes Friday night or not at all.  The Freedom Fest has rain insurance for that event if it's a total loss.

Some other popular Freedom Fest activities, like the parades, cardboard boat regatta and other things also depend on cooperative weather.  But Oviatt said organizers will try to get in as much as they can barring extreme conditions-such as lightning.

“If it's a downpour of something like that-yeah, we're scrubbed.  But if it's a drizzle early in the morning with say the Office Olympiad at Greene Square Park…we can go with that,” Oviatt said.

Weather can make a big different on the bottom line.  2003 was a year when nearly everything went right with the weather.  But the next year, 2004, saw a number of big events lost to rain.  Records show spending by spectators dropped about $2-million dollars in that rainy Freedom Fest year.

Oviatt said moving the rock and pops concerts at Kirkwood to a parking lot actually won't mean losing any extra parking.  The concert is taking place on a new lot finished this year-so spectators will have the same number of spaces they had last year.