SEQUIM — After a six-year ride, the marketing guru responsible for promoting Sequim’s annual Celebrate Lavender Festival has parted ways with the association sponsoring the highly successful event.
Beginning 2004, the 3-day July festival will be run not by InsideOut Marketing president Pat McCauley, but by an as-yet unnamed executive director to be chosen by the Sequim Lavender Growers’ Association.
“We’re throwing around ideas here,” association president Sue Shirkey said Thursday.
“We’ve reached a point in our festival where we probably have to re-evaluate where we are, how we got here — and where we want to go,” she said.
The festival, begun in 1997, features a mix of tours of area lavender farms and vendor booths at a downtown street fair.
It has grown steadily over the years and last year drew in an estimated 30,000 visitors, many from out of the area.
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The rest of the story appears in the Friday/Saturday Peninsula Daily News.