WinterFest needs investment

WinterFest attracted more than 100,000 people to Mullingar last Christmas; however, it was significantly “loss making”, it has emerged.

Speaking at an Economic, Enterprise and Tourism SPC (Strategic Policy Committee) meeting last week, the president of Mullingar Chamber Tom Hyland said the “dynamic” the ice-rink brought to the town proved worthwhile. But without significant investment, the business model for WinterFest is not sustainable.

“It definitely ticks the boxes in terms of achieving what the aim is,” he said. “But this year there is a question over it. This year it was significantly loss-making,” Mr Hyland said.

“You can see a clear uplift in trade, in retail, and particularly the food sector. A survey conducted on those who attended found less than 50% were from Mullingar.

“The balance came from outside [the town], and the majority from outside the county.

And while holding the winter festival in Mullingar Town Park proved worthy, there are issues with the location.

“If this was purely a commercial venture it wouldn’t be in the Town Park, it would be in a shopping centre – which wouldn’t achieve the goal of bringing business to the local retailers.

Challenges

“There are particular challenges around the location in the park, the provision of power, and there seems to be obstacles to doing that, but again it’s investment for future benefit.

“If we are going to use that location as a hub for events, there needs to be significant investment in the provision of power and sanitary facilities,” Mr Hyland said.

“With that volume of people going through the park, there’s obviously a level of wear and tear. So there’s a level of investment that could make it more suitable for those kind of events. That is something we need to consider.

With more trade moving online, Mr Hyland called for a deeper review into business as part of any overall strategy for Westmeath.

“We are fortunate in Mullingar that the main street hasn’t seen the extent of closure of retail that other towns have, though that is definitely a character of retail now.

“The tendency is more towards coffee shops and that sort of ‘quick’ business. It’s an ongoing threat to the town centres and the tradition of retail.

“I think this is something we need to look at, certainly from a county perspective in terms of the two towns, and what we’re going to do to tackle this.

“But certainly when it comes to WinterFest, it is an unfortunate characteristic that there is a low level of engagement from retail, the group that it benefits.

“The level of sponsorship was low, there was only one main retail sponsor, the rest of the sponsors were mainly industry.

“We need to do a deeper dive into how this can be sustainable or developed.”

Cllr John Shaw, chairman of the SPC, said engagement is needed at an early stage between the council and Mullingar and Athlone chambers.

He said there is “quite a big fund” at their disposal, “the guts of €160,000” which can be used for ambitious projects.

Cllr Emily Wallace said it was important to put a working group for WinterFest together now, at the beginning of the year.

“Retailers have been through a really hard time and expecting small retailers to sponsor this – it’s about the bottom line for them.

“We need to be more mindful on how we bring them with us and what we can do to achieve that, and I don’t think that’s going to happen three weeks out from an event.

“That body of work has to be done months ahead, and it starts now really.

“We need to show them how an event can help them,” said Cllr Wallace, who acknowledged that with the fleadh in August, it could put people off preparing now for WinterFest.

Cllr Bill Collentine argued that WinterFest should not be lost.

“It is important to Mullingar, it has brought a lot of business to the town, and all businesses need this extra revenue.

“There was a lot of interest this year, it was up on last year, we need to keep it going. We need to keep it as an annual event.”

Athlone councillor John Dolan said it takes money to run every event and it needs to be planned now, before the fleadh takes over.

“You need to give ownership back to the people, but as Emily said, now is the right time to do a post-mortem on last Christmas, when it’s fresh in your minds.

“You need to look at what the issues were because people are going to get caught up in the fleadh and before you know it, it will be too late.

“You need to have everything in place for next Christmas.”