After a successful first year, the North Bend Fan Fest is returning on Saturday, Oct. 15, to downtown North Bend.
The Fan Fest is a Seattle Seahawks-themed tailgate and rally to raise monetary and food donations for the Snoqualmie Valley Food Bank. The Wheels of Boom, a Seahawks-themed car club, is partnering with the event to collect the donations for the food bank.
Stacey Cepeda, events and economic development coordinator at the city of North Bend, said the 2015 event raised more than $13,000 in total donation value.
“The total dollar amount was over $13,000, most of that was food related,” she said. “That’s our goal, we are hoping to exceed the dollar amount.”
For its second year, the North Bend Fan Fest, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., will host all new events which will include paintball target shooting, trampolines and pony rides.
New and returning artists will be performing at the event, as well. Cepeda said the Fan Fest will host returning artists MyBoy Skitzo, Bad Idea and Dakota Poorman. Some of the new performers include Seattle-based line dancing group the Boot Boogie Babes and the local Kellee Bradley Band, she said.
In addition to new events and performances, the Fan Fest has a new date and location this year. Due to the heavy rain at last year’s event in November, the Fan Fest has been moved to October for better weather.
“In the pouring rain we still had about 1,000 people come out to the event. It was beyond raining, we felt pretty lucky we had the turnout we had last year,” Cepeda said. “We are hoping with the change of the date, we are able to catch a nice fall day.”
Also last year, people showed strong support for the event beneficiary, the Snoqualmie Valley Food Bank. Food Bank Director Heidi Dukich said the organization is happy to work with the city and Wheels of Boom again, adding “Last year, we collected over 6,300 pounds of food, and this really demonstrates the power of a community working together.”
The Fan Fest activities will be located on North Bend Way from W. Bendigo Boulevard to 330 W. North Bend Way. Cepeda said the move away from last year’s location was for logistic reasons to give the vendors and car club more room to spread out as well as to accommodate the two food trucks at the event.
“Vendors will be on one side of the street and the car club will be on the other side of the street,” she said.
The North Bend Fan Fest will also have guest appearances by the mothers of Marshawn Lynch and Richard Sherman as well as the Seahawks mascot Blitz.
Oct. 15 isn’t just the day for the Fan Fest in North Bend, Si View Metro Parks will also be hosting its Harvest Festival. The festival will have a pool pumpkin patch for winners to pick from, a petting zoo, a haunted house and hayrides.
Cepeda said collaboration between the two events was discussed, but there was not enough time to work anything out. She hopes to collaborate with Si View Parks for next year’s event.
“The parks department and I talked and tried to collaborate a little bit, whether by moving our location closer to them or, they are doing wagon rides so we thought about transporting people between events,” she said. “There is a lot of collaboration we are looking for next year but we got started a little too late.”
