A two-day music and beer festival scheduled for July 13-14 at the Southwest Washington Fairgrounds in Chehalis was canceled earlier this week following an attempt by Flood Valley Brewing owner Chris Rohr to move the event onto city streets.
Rohr did not respond to repeated requests for comment. A Facebook post written Monday and attributed to him says in part “I apologize to all of you who looked forward to this event. It saddens me as I know this will affect public opinion of me and my business, but I have done all I could.”
The post goes on to say that there may still be live music at Flood Valley Brewing that weekend, but it will be limited to patrons ages 21 and up.
Chehalis City Manager Jill Anderson wasn’t sure what went wrong with the plan to host more than 30 bands, a beer garden and food vendors for an all-ages festival at the fairgrounds, just that Rohr approached the city last week hoping to get permits for a street event.
Anderson said one issue was whether Chehalis’ public public safety arm would be able to handle Floodstock and the scores of cyclists expected to be in Recreation Park that weekend as part of the Seattle to Portland Classic bike ride.
“We started the process of reviewing it and had some concerns,” Anderson said. “We’re going to have thousands of bikes and people in the city with a lot more traffic going through town. Potentially, we could have some road closures. We communicated that to (Rohr) informally, and he chose to withdraw his application.”
Tamara Hayes, Fair and Events Manager for the Fairgrounds, was unavailable for comment Friday.
