Sandy Springs is scrapping its plan for a giant, holiday-themed 10th birthday party due to concerns about expense, parking and other issues, city Communications Director Sharon Kraun said.
“We pulled back on that,” Kraun said, adding the plan had been canceled “rather than do something that might not turn out the way we wanted.”
The city will still hold two smaller celebrations of its 10th anniversary early next month. And the plan for the larger party–proposed to include tree- and menorah-lightings and fireworks–may revive sometime after 2017, when the new City Springs development and park will be available as a host site, Kraun said.
The city’s 10th anniversary is Dec. 1 and officials have been planning celebrations around that date. The two events still happening are a City Hall open house on Dec. 1 and a $30-a-ticket party with a history display inside the Sherwood Event Hall on Dec. 4.
The now-scrapped larger party was to be held Dec. 5 at Heritage Sandy Springs. Intended to establish a new holiday tradition for the city, it came with an estimated price tag of up to $130,000, as Kraun announced at the Oct. 20 City Council meeting. Later discussions raised concerns about sufficient parking, electrical capacity for the lights, and other issues, Kraun said.
“Some elements would have been very expensive,” she said. “It got more complicated…You name an issue, we had it.”
“We were wanting to kick it off, but the pieces were not falling into place,” Kraun said of the holiday-tradition idea, adding that the future City Springs may give the city the opportunity in the future. “A lot of challenges we have [in planning such an event] will be resolved by City Springs.”
Good, save the money.