The Center of Gravity festival is now in full swing on the Kelowna waterfront. The long weekend event is expected to attract 28,000 people, the largest crowd ever for the three-day festival.
Organizers are hoping to avoid the fate of other major Okanagan festivals that grew too large, caused too many problems and were eventually cancelled.
“Obviously everyone remembers Wakefest and Regatta got out of control at the end. For us, we’ve learned from those events,” said Center of Gravity organizer Scott Emslie.
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Crowds began to gather on Friday for the fifth annual sports and music festival. The event attracts thousands of people from across the province and from other parts of the country.
Emslie says organizers have been working on crowd control plans for the better part of the year and will be on the look-out to ensure the festival does not turn into a big, boozy mess.
“We’re doing a soft close. In the past we’ve done a hard flush at 10 p.m. Our headliner would end and we would send everybody out. This year, we’re continuing for another hour and basically the idea behind that is to keep the younger kids here on-site, give them something to do for another hour and then anyone looking to go to the night clubs and the after-parties heads out,” Emslie said.
Organizers have arranged shuttle buses to pick people up and drop them off at the various hotels in Kelowna throughout the event. They have also organized an off-site venue for party-goers in hopes of funneling people out of the downtown core.
Center of Gravity runs until Sunday night.
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