How can the festival better coordinate with July 4 holiday events and the Traverse City Film Festival?
Menzel: Certainly by being at the table with all those organizations…we can be open to collaboration with them. But I think we have to be careful about where we take leads. We certainly want to be partners. If there’s four organizations that want to have fireworks, let’s bid together rather than individually and combine our resources. But we don’t want to take the lead in those activities; we want to take the lead in Cherry Festival activities. TART Trails, I think there’s some great opportunities to work with them to enhance the public awareness of the TART Trails and the value of the TART Trails and maybe link it into a bike ride we’re talking about doing at the Cherry Festival. Those are the kinds of things we think we can do. (On the Film Festival)…I think it would be wrong to position it as a threat. I think it’s better to position it as another opportunity for growth of another industry in the Traverse City area that diversifies another reason for people coming here. I think
