"Local news worth reading" — The New York Times
SUBSCRIBE
The independent voice for West Orange County news
Two groups had already dropped out of Winter Garden’s Martin Luther King, Jr. parade when the city decided to pull the plug last Thursday, four days before its Jan. 19 event. Of the dozen groups on the parade roster, that left just 10. And past experience told Laura Coar, the city Parks and Recreation director, that with the frigid temperatures expected, more groups were likely to cancel the day of Monday's parade.
“We've had that in the past when it's been cold, where people say they're coming and we check back in with them and they're coming. Then they no-show and you have four or five people,” Coar told VoxPopuli in a phone interview.
“That's kind of where it was trending and … we wanted to make sure that we didn't get right up to the wire and then try to reach everybody and say, Okay, it's canceled because we had massive cancellations,” she said, adding, “Nothing's worse than doing an event and it not looking successful, you know?”
Had it not been canceled, the parade would have been the city's seventh.
The city announced that the post-parade Celebration of the civil rights icon's legacy, with bands and food vendors at Winter Garden's outdoor Downtown Pavilion, would take place as planned. Meanwhile, Coar and her team scrambled to “round up heaters from everybody we could” to warm up the seating area in front of the stage.
City Manager Jon Williams told VoxPopuli Thursday that the parade would have taken place, even with just 10 entrants, were it not for the cold.
“I can’t heat all of Plant Street,” Williams said, referring to the parade route.
When asked why Ocoee went ahead with its Martin Luther King Jr. parade, which had 37 entrants, on the same day Winter Garden canceled theirs (albeit earlier in the morning when it was even chillier), Williams said he only made decisions for Winter Garden.
Coar noted a key difference was that Ocoee’s parade was followed by an indoor event at the West Oaks Mall while Winter Garden’s parade and Celebration were both held outdoors.
“We really looked at the experience as a whole and people being out in the cold for an extended period of time,” she said. “It worked out really well, and no one asked us Why didn’t you do the parade?”
Coar leads a department known for producing events, like Light Up Winter Garden, which draw tens of thousands of people to the city. Freezing temperatures aside, she told VoxPopuli that recruiting participants to Winter Garden’s MLK parade has long been a “struggle.”
“The parade has been discouraging,” she said candidly.
She said that her staff reaches out to politicians, churches, local organizations to invite them participate. She said they call. They remind. They nag. They get help from a committee of community residents. They post parade information on the city website. The parade is even free.
“It's so frustrating for my group because they really do all the outreach, and we talk to anybody and everybody and all the organizations that we can. We keep beating our head and saying, We’ll try it this year, Maybe this year, Maybe this year. That's why even with the lack of participation, it's carried on. We really wanted it to be successful.”
Instead, Coar said, “it disappoints me every year."
One of the challenges is that Ocoee’s MLK parade is so well established — it just notched its 18th year. Many of the people Coar would like to attract to Winter Garden's parade “were already invested in the Ocoee parade. Or they did the parade in Eatonville or they did the Orlando [parade]," she said. "It’s kind of the reverse of Christmas. You know Ocoee doesn’t have a Christmas parade anymore; they all come here. I just think with Ocoee having it and there are so many parades, we’re like last to the table, and it’s just not there.”
Coar told VoxPopuli that for next year, she’s considering changing things up.
“Do we just not even have it next year?” she mused. “Concentrate on the Celebration, concentrate on the speakers, you know, concentrate on us. Let other people have their parade, and we're going to have a Celebration.
“Kind of where my thoughts are is the parade is nice,” she said, “but the Celebration and the community interaction is a really important piece.”
