Despite a considerable drop in turnout from years past, Kent officials are calling Saturday\u2019s Fourth of July Splash at Lake Meridian Park a good time and the \u201csmoothest-running\u201d holiday weekend in years.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a good group of people out at the lake,\u201d said Kent Cultural Programs Coordinator and event director Mark Hendrickson.<\/p>\n
An estimated 10,000 people turned out for the festivities, down from 18,000 to 20,000 in prior years, according to Hendrickson, who attributed the drop in turnout to both the heat and the event taking place on the middle day of a three-day weekend, which could have led to people being out of town.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe think a lot of it had to do with where the Fourth of July fell,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Hendrickson said he did not think the lack of a symphony, which was cut this year for budget reasons, affected the turnout and said the bands that played during the day were well-received.<\/p>\n
Hendrickson also said the pie and watermelon-eating contests continue to grow, something that is an \u201cunexpected surprise\u201d to organizers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s becoming an anchor of the event,\u201d he said, adding that this year, more than 30 competitors battled in nine different eating contests.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou see the same smile on a 9-year-old as you do on a 45-year-old dad,\u201d Hendrickson said.<\/p>\n
There was also praise for this year\u2019s fireworks display.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fireworks show was probably the best one we\u2019ve ever had,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was a really impressive one.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hendrickson said as of Monday there had not yet been a full meeting on the event, but said there were no major incidents and everything ran fairly easily, from the events to transportation issues.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was probably one of the smoothest-running ones we\u2019ve ever had,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Despite a considerable drop in turnout from years past, Kent officials are calling Saturday\u2019s Fourth of July Splash at Lake Meridian Park a good time and the \u201csmoothest-running\u201d holiday weekend in years. \u201cIt was a good group of people out at the lake,\u201d said Kent Cultural Programs Coordinator and event director Mark Hendrickson. An estimated […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":17973,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-17972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17972"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17972\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17972"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=17972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}