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OCTOBER 19 - 21 A special section of the Baldwin City Signal and Lawrence Journal-World 300 craft booths to be at festival Country music featured in entertainment tent Tips for traveling to Maple Leaf 100 quilts to be displayed at quilt show

Baldwin special section Maple Leaf

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Page 1: Baldwin special section Maple Leaf

OCTOBER 19 - 21

A special section of the Baldwin City Signal and Lawrence Journal-World

300 craft booths to • be at festival

Country music featured • in entertainment tent

Tips for traveling • to Maple Leaf

100 quilts to be • displayed at quilt show

Page 2: Baldwin special section Maple Leaf

8 | Maple Leaf Festival, 2012 .

Repeat vendors help make Maple Leaf Festival successful

Labor Day Weekend was not a time of leisure for the family of Donna and Denny Haddox.

A number of her grandchildren and her daughter-in-law were busy in the family workshop helping her husband, Denny, fabricate metal lawn and gar-den decorative items for the fall craft show season, Donna Haddox said.

“They have jobs or are away in col-lege. This is a day they can help,” she said.

One of the shows the South Cof-feyville, Okla., couple will attend this fall is the Maple Leaf Festival.

“We used to do 25 or 30 a year,” Haddox said. “But this year, we’ll do 10 at the outside. Age is catching up to us.

“We weeded out some of the small-er shows. Baldwin is one of our bet-ter shows. People look forward every year to what we have new.”

The family bends and shapes long steel “sticks” into gates, trellises, gar-den baskets, planters, whimsical ani-mals and other items to decorate lawns and gardens, Haddox said. They try to add new items to their group of tried-and-true popular sellers, she said.

“We try things we see in magazine or what we think might work,” she said. “Sometimes, nobody likes them

but the builder, but most of the time they work.”

As they have since they started at-tending the Maple Leaf Festival more than a decade ago, the Haddoxes will set up shop at the corner of Eighth and Indiana streets. The intersection at the southern end of the festival gives them plenty of room to display their wares and park a trailer filled with more.

“People can drive up and load our stuff, which makes it kind of nice. Some of our stuff is heavy and bulky,” Donna said. “People know where to find us. We appreciate the Maple Leaf committee taking that into consider-ation, because we get a lot of repeat customers.”

Donna Curren, booth chairman for the Maple Leaf Festival, said 20 to 25 percent of Maple Leaf vendors signed up for the next year during the last day of the festival, which guaranteed they would return to the same spot.

Such loyalty helps ensure Maple Leaf will again have its maximum limit of vendors, Curren said.

“We’re totally full,” she said. “We have about 215 vendors — about 300 with the food and Business and Pro-fessional Women vendors.”

Haddox said the Maple Leaf Festival has grown since she and her husband first started attending about a dozen years ago.

“It’s definitely taken a leap,” she

said. “It’s such a beautiful town and the people are so nice and friendly, it makes you want to come back.”

Although here for business, she’s also a festival sightseer and customer,

Haddox said.“I usually try to get away,” she said.

“I usually try to see what others are doing. And we eat. Some of the smells just tantalize you.”

By Elvyn [email protected]

File photo

A MAple leAf shopper browses a craft booth offering colorful wreaths at a recent festival. About 300 art and crafts booths will be at the festival Saturday and Sunday.

Page 3: Baldwin special section Maple Leaf

Maple Leaf Festival, 2012 | 7

Baldwin City businesses plan for hectic weekend

Stan Vickers remembers 20 years ago when friends in his hometown of Williamsburg tried to get him to join them for a trip to the Maple Leaf Fes-tival.

He was then a farmer and too busy during fall harvest to go, Vickers said.

He is still busy during Maple Leaf weekend. But as owner of Antiques on the Prairie at the corner of Sixth and High streets, he is now in the middle of the event that brings an estimated 30,000 visitors the third weekend in October to Baldwin City.

“I totally want to thank the men who put this together all those years ago to create revenue for all the businesses and bring a parade by my front door,” Vickers said.

Like many other Baldwin City busi-ness owners, Vickers is planning spe-cial attractions to entice some of the festival throng into his store. Food vendors will be in his parking lot offer-ing brats and sauerkraut and barbecue.

Mike Langrehr, owner of the Town Galleria, 715 Eighth St., said the festival offered an assurance to his business.

“It’s a good feeling to know there will be a time of year you’re going to get customers,” he said. “You usually only get that at Christmastime.”

The shop plans something different every year, Langrehr said. This year, the store will have T-shirts, but in the last 12 months Langrehr also took over the bistro that others have run in the front of his store in the past. He will be offering breakfast and lunch specials,

as well as coffee and soft drinks. But Langrehr knows the sidewalk

in front of his store will be lined with vendors offering food and multiple wares to compete with the items he and his consignment vendors have for sale within the store.

“This will be the first time for the res-taurant,” he said. “I have no idea what is going to happen. We’re going to just get ready and try to catch their attention.”

Langrehr and Vickers said the ben-efit of Maple Leaf wasn’t limited to the weekend of the festival. They have customers return weeks or months later when things are less hectic.

“I’ve had people tell me they came back because they didn’t have enough time to look around during Maple Leaf,” Vickers said.

For Jessica Worley, manager of the Kwik Shop at the corner of Sixth and Ames streets, planning for the festival starts three weeks before the vendors and crowds descend on Baldwin City. That’s when she starts communicating with her vendors to ensure the store’s shelves will be full.

All the store’s employees are sched-uled to work festival weekend, and it would take a family emergency or seri-ous illness for someone to be excused from a shift, Worley said. In the past, she has had to request additional clerks from Kwik Shop stores in Lawrence.

The store always offers something special to tie into the festival, such as cookies packaged like those offered by vendors, Worley said.

“It’s our busiest weekend of the year,” Worley said. “It’s hectic, but it’s fun. I look forward to it.”

By Elvyn [email protected]

With an estimated 30,000 people visit-ing Baldwin City festival weekend, lo-cal business are busy planning to capture some of the traffic.

File photo

Page 4: Baldwin special section Maple Leaf

6 | Maple Leaf Festival, 2012 .

Volunteers make festival possible

The city’s wonderful fall foliage and vendors may be the Maple Leaf Fes-tival’s attraction, but it is the work of volunteers that make it a success.

The effort is led by the all-volunteer Maple Leaf Committee. The commit-tee meets every month except Decem-ber and will start organizing the 2013 event in November.

The committee, whose 24 members gathered at its last monthly meeting in October to coordinate final details of the festival, is but the core of the vol-unteers who make the festival possible.

Once the festival starts, volunteers pitch in to help with such things as manning the festival information table in front of the Baldwin City Chamber of Commerce building at Eighth and High streets, taking turns at the public address microphone across the street on the festival stage, manning street barricades and driving trams shuttling visitors from downtown to more far-flung activities.

“Our volunteers make it possible for the festival to run smoothly,” said Amber Roden, 2012 Maple Leaf Fes-tival chairwoman. “We have so many people help keep the festival clean and safe.”

Donna Curran, and two-time past committee chairwoman, went further.

“The festival wouldn’t be possible

without volunteers,” she said. There are a few complicated jobs,

requiring mobilization of volunteers. Two youth groups pitch in to help per-form two of those tasks.

Curran said the Baldwin First Unit-ed Methodist Church youth will help her Friday with the difficult task of putting down the tape marking out the space where the 300 craft vendors and 17 food vendors will set up in Satur-day’s early morning hours.

Picking up the tape and all other trash left behind by the other 30,000 Maple Leaf Festival visitors falls to Baldwin City Boy Scout Troop 65.

Richard Dietz, assistant Scoutmas-ter, said that tape would be part of the Scouts’ final cleanup, which he said used techniques Scouts learn at camps and perfected under Roger Boyd’s many years of leadership.

“At the end of Sunday, we walk the line side-by-side from one side of the street to the other and pick up every little gum wrapper. It’s a Boy Scout tradition to leave a camp clearer than when we arrived. The streets of Bald-win really will be cleaner Sunday night than before the festival,” Dietz said.

The end-of-festival cleanup is just part the of the Boy Scouts’ trash=removal efforts. Throughout Saturday and Sunday, Scouts will walk festival streets checking to see if the 55-gallon trash and recycling barrels need emptied in trash bins located in alleys, Dietz said.

By Elvyn [email protected]

File photo

Volunteers use a two-by-four to mark off space for a vendor’s booth before the 2008 festival. Volunteers perform many tasks to make the festival run smoothly.

Page 5: Baldwin special section Maple Leaf

Maple Leaf Festival, 2012 | 5

Once a sideshow, quilt show now big part of Maple Leaf

For the past 41 years, the annual Maple Leaf Festival Quilt Show has been a way for quilters to display their work to the public, but the event has evolved from a show to a teaching op-portunity.

“It shows the history of the quilts and gets people interested in it,” said Connie Mollett, a member of the Ma-ple Leaf Quilt Guild.

The display began as a small side-show to the Maple Leaf Festival and has grown to more than 100 quilts.

The quilts are all different. Some have themes, others are more techni-cal and some are heirlooms, but all of the quilts tell a story about the quilter and the history of quilting.

“That’s our heritage,” said quilt guild treasurer Cathy Miles. “Seeing something that someone slept un-der maybe 100 years ago, it gives you something to think about.”

Last year, the quilt show had quilts made by children as young as 10 years old to women who had been quilt-ing for more than 50 years. The guild hopes for the same diversity and num-bers this year.

“It’s just amazing to see the variety and the different skill levels and tech-niques people use,” Miles said.

Vendors from area quilting and fab-ric stores will also be at the show with products and demonstrations for in-terested guests.

Those attending will have the chance to win a quilt. Tickets are available for $1 or six tickets for $5. The quilt has a maple leaf theme and is brown, gold and black. The money from the tickets helps pay for the cost of the quilt and support the guild.

“We try to do charity things and such, and this just helps us to do that,” Mollett said.

The location of the show was changed to the Baldwin Elementary School Intermediate Center last fall ,and although some people had a prob-lem finding the show, it worked out because the ample space of the gym-nasium made room for extra quilts.

Miles said with the extra space it’s hard not to go overboard and show as many quilts as possible.

“I ended up with too many last year, so I’m trying to keep a better perspec-tive this year,” she said.

The Quilt Show will be from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday in the Baldwin Intermediate Center gymnasium. It is free and open to the public. There is free parking for the show at the center and a shuttle to and from the quilt show and town.

By Meagan [email protected]

Viewers enjoy works on display at a recent Maple Leaf Festival Quilt Show. The show was moved to the Baldwin Elementary School Inter-mediate Center last year, a space that gives organizers more room to display the 100 quilts in the show.

File photo

Page 6: Baldwin special section Maple Leaf

4 | Maple Leaf Festival, 2012 .

Festival finds right balance, for now

In recent years, the size of the Maple Leaf Festival has continued to grow. With more than 300 craft booths, a quilt show, 17 food vendors and activities ranging from a parade to carnival rides, a person could easily spend a full day in Baldwin City and still not see everything the festival has to offer.

Currently there are no plans to ex-pand Maple Leaf further, but there are some limits as to how much the festi-val could grow.

Sharon Vesecky, festival committee secretary, said the committee is seek-ing the right balance of vendors and attendance. The more vendors there are, the less money each makes — un-less attendance increases.

“If we do continue to see a growth in the vendors requesting booths at the festival, the committee would need to get more people to come to Maple Leaf and we’d need more vol-unteers,” Vesecky said.

Baldwin City government provides traffic control, utility services and law enforcement, and help erecting signs.

“In terms of manpower, we rely on other agencies from the area, law en-forcement, to help with those type of things, so growth wouldn’t threaten anything we do,” said Chris Lowe, Baldwin City administrator.

The festival committee has made adjustments over the years to accom-modate the growth in vendors and guests. The committee has added fea-tures, such as the children’s parade and kids’ zone, relocated events and booths, and improved tram opera-tions.

Another improvement the commit-tee made is satellite parking at the junior high and high schools. This al-lows visitors to park conveniently and catch a bus to and from their car with-out walking long distances.

“Each year after the festival, the committee addresses a potential snag and spends the rest of the year try-ing to improve it for the next year,” Vesecky said.

For now, the festival will continue at its current size, but Vesecky said that, big or small, the festival has a need for the same thing every year.

“We’re always looking for more volunteers,” she said.

By Meagan [email protected]

Beer gardens new this year to Maple Leaf

The Maple Leaf Festival will take on an Oktoberfest feel this year with two beer gardens.

A new feature at the festival, the beer gardens will not be open on Ma-ple Leaf’s closing day Sunday.

One of the beer gardens will be in the street in a fenced-in area in front of Moni’s Seafood and Barbecue, 711 High St. Jon Cook, owner of Moni’s with his wife, Monica, said the restau-rant’s beer garden would be open Fri-day and Saturday and manned by two

off-duty police officers.The wine and mixed drinks avail-

able inside the restaurant will not be offered in the beer garden, Cook said.

The Baldwin Soccer Supporters will offer the second beer garden on Sixth Street south of the Grove Street tennis courts. Richard Dietz said the soccer group would have two booths at the location, a traditional food booth and the beer garden.

Beer would be served in plastic cups and would have to be consumed within the fencing that encloses the beer gar-den, Dietz said. The garden only would be open Saturday afternoon, he said.

By Elvyn [email protected]

Page 7: Baldwin special section Maple Leaf

Maple Leaf Festival, 2012 | 3

Lawrence residents urged to use U.S. 59 if driving to Maple Leaf

Lawrence residents planning to at-tend the Maple Leaf Festival should know the trip to Baldwin City would be a great time to try out the new four-lane U.S. Highway 59 — or to say goodbye to the old two-lane road if the new highway isn’t yet open. That is because construction has closed about 1.5 miles of Douglas County Road 1055, the alternate route to Baldwin City.

County Road 1055, which is Sixth Street in Baldwin City, is currently closed at the bottom of Baldwin Hill, a mile north of the Baldwin City limits. The official detour directs motorists coming south on 1055 west at Douglas County 460 to U.S. 59 five miles to the west. Traffic is then back to Baldwin City on U.S. Highway 56. The unoffi-cial detour local residents use involve narrow gravel roads, lots of turns and probably other headaches if packed with festival traffic.

As always for the festival, the city will close some Baldwin City streets and make others one-way. In addition, parking will be restricted on many downtown streets.

With that in mind, out-of-town visi-

tors are encouraged to park in outly-ing parking lots and ride buses to and from the festival.

Baldwin City Councilman Coy Weege said out-of-town visitors would be able to park and get bus rides at Baldwin schools. Baldwin Elementary School Primary Center, 500 Lincoln St., and Baldwin Elementary School Intermediate School, 100 Bullpup Drive, would be the most convenient park-and-ride locations for those com-ing from Lawrence on U.S. 56. The Baldwin Middle and High school cam-pus on 400 block of Eisenhower Street is the better option for those traveling from the east on U.S. 56. Signage on the highway will direct visitors to the park-and-ride locations.

Parking will be prohibited Saturday and Sunday on Eighth Street between Ames and Indiana streets. Vehicles parked on the streets will be towed. Parking will be banned on High Street from Ninth Street to U.S. 56 on Satur-day because of the parade. Ninth Street will be converted to a northbound one-way street, and 10th Street a one-way street for southbound traffic.

Those attending the festival are re-minded there is a no-dog policy. The rule has been in enforced the last five years.

By Elvyn [email protected]

Page 8: Baldwin special section Maple Leaf

2 | Maple Leaf Festival, 2012 .

Parade to kick off Maple Leaf Festival

Maple Leaf Festival Committee Pa-rade Chairman Jeremy Rodrock said guests can expect great bands and many floats during the 2012 Maple Leaf Parade on Saturday.

The grand marshals of the Maple Leaf Festival parade, voted on by the Maple Leaf Festival Committee, are Jim and Diane Niehoff. Diane is a co-founder of the Lumberyard Arts Cen-ter, and the two and are “outstanding citizens of the Baldwin City commu-nity,” Rodrock said.

The Niehoffs, along with Maple Leaf Scholars Austin Krause and Kai-tlyn Barnes will lead the parade.

Rodrock said one of the highlights of the parade will be a patriotic float by Patriot Project Inc. The float will be staged on Eighth Street between Baker and Chapel streets after the parade.

“It talks about patriotism and differ-ent things like that,” Rodrock said. “It

should be interesting.”This year’s election will add numbers

to the parade, as well. Rodrock said viewers can expect to see candidates, their representatives and organizations encouraging voting in the parade.

Along with political participants, there will be about 10 marching bands and some car clubs.

A children’s parade is also sched-uled to start at 10:45 a.m. so children can walk or ride bikes, starting at the corner of Sixth and High streets.

Although it is helpful for parade participants to register ahead of time, it isn’t necessary. Anyone showing up at High Street and U.S. Highway 56 be-fore the parade starts will get a place in the lineup.

The Maple Leaf Parade will begin at 11 a.m. Saturday at Third and High streets. The route will travel down High Street, turn north onto Sixth Street and end at Baker Street. Ro-drock said the parade would last from 60 to 90 minutes.

By Meagan [email protected]

File photo

An Army band marches down one of Baldwin City’s brick streets during a recent Maple Leaf Festival Parade. Those attending this year’s parade can expect band, floats and candi-dates taking advantage of a large crowd to campaign for the coming election.