The Cultural Village entrance was used as the “official” Fiesta entrance for year 2010 at Hoover Met.
NOTE: Fiesta Fridays is a special series to highlight the many memories I have of Fiesta through the photographs I’ve taken since 2003.
Fiesta 2010 brought quite a few changes to our festival. After 2009, the board met in a strategic planning session and discussed moving the festival to another location. Hoover, Alabama came to mind because of the city’s diverse population. We were going into year 8 and the feeling was that if we were going to do something big, now was the time!
A huge crowd gathers in front of the main stage around mid-afternoon at Fiesta 2010.
The move took a little time to process and recently I found a series of emails from this time period and it threw me right back into this planning period. We essentially had about 4-5 months to get Fiesta pulled together that year! Once we met with Hoover Mayor Tony Petelos and discussed our desire to mover the festival to Hoover and got his support, the actual logistics of the event were handled like clockwork. Erin Colbaugh, Hoover’s Event Coordinator, was a dream to work with and so things stayed on track in that area as our board, committees and Fiesta’s own event manager, Denise Koch, planned the festival details.
The location we selected was the Hoover Met. We were able to use the grassy area outside the stadium for our Family Area and everything else was set up in the RV park. One of the benefits of the RV park was the access to electricity for every tent that was set up. There was also plenty of parking for Fiesta guests! We were able to set up a perimeter around the park to enable us to charge admission to the event. (All proceeds from ticket sales always go toward Fiesta scholarship.)
This was also the first year of our partnership with Home Depot! I remember having phone conversations with a guy by the name of Chris Miller leading up to the event – very soft spoken, laid back. Chris was organizing the Home Depot “army” for the event complete with orange aprons, children’s area crafts and a team of volunteers. One of the most awesome sights that year was the sea of orange coming from the Family area! It certainly complimented the Fiesta color scheme! I got to meet Chris that day too and a few years later, we elected him to our Fiesta Board. The rest, as they say…is history!
A father, mother and child enjoy the music at Fiesta 2010. This is my favorite photo from Fiesta 2010…really captures the Fiesta spirit of familia!!
Probably my favorite photo from 2010 is this one (above)…a family…in front of the Coca Cola Main stage listening to the music. I don’t know…it just symbolized Fiesta for me that year…that no matter where Fiesta takes place, it’s about family and community. The community came out in full force to Fiesta in our new location and we were happy with the change that year.
More to come so please come back every other Friday through September 30, 2017 for more behind the scenes stories of Fiesta!
Southern Señora 