The Duneland Business Initiative Group (DBIG) will no longer sponsor the Wizard of Oz Festival.

And unless a new organization agrees to fill the void—or unless a new one is formed to fill the void—the 2012 edition of Oz Fest will have been the last.

Machelle Blount, who originally spearheaded DBIG’s sponsorship of the Oz Fest four years ago—returning it to Downtown Chesterton from where Lakeshore Festival Events had displaced it in the move to the Porter County Expo Center—told the Chesterton Tribune today that “it was time for it to go.”

“Someday the day was going to come,” she said. “And that day came.”

Blount cited a couple of reasons for the decision. For one thing, attendance has dwindled over time. In the first year of DBIG’s sponsorship, in 2009, excitement over the return of Oz to the Downtown translated into some pretty big numbers, Blount said. But the festival took a hit in the following year, 2010, after a rainy Sunday, and at this last edition, in 2012, there “just didn’t seem to be as many folks as in previous years.”

Blount noted that in 2012 DBIG tried to dovetail the festival with some new Oz motion pictures in the pipeline by screening trailers for the flicks. “We thought it would be a plus,” she said, a neat way to spin the event. “But there wasn’t a whole lot of interest in that,” she said.

But Blount cited another big reason: the sheer time involved in organizing it. “Any event this large is going to be very difficult to get off the ground without paying people,” she said. “There’s enough work for two full-time positions over the course of an entire year. I did try to pay people but you can’t pay a whole heck of a lot.”

“There’s always going to be a birthday, an anniversary, a release, some rationale to keep the festival going one more year,” Blount said. But in the end DBIG concluded that this wasn’t reason enough to keep Oz afloat. “It was something our group was not willing to continue year after year.”

Although DBIG’s premier event has always been the Wizard of Oz Festival, the group has been involved in numerous other successes: Bark in the Park, the Taste of Duneland, the Family 4th Fest.

And Blount is hopeful that “some other organization will pick up Oz” going forward. “I don’t want it to die with me,” she said.

Blount promised to help any other organization in whatever way she can to make a transition, would be happy to share her vendor and contact lists, would be delighted to offer all possible resources. “My recommendation: make it a paid position,” she added.

An Oz Fest committee member will soon be contacting all of the Oz celebrities with the news.

Blount did offer her special thanks to the Town of Chesterton, which has consistently provided logistical and manpower support to the festival.

“The Town of Chesterton has been absolutely supportive,” she said. “The cooperation I’ve had with the town. The partnership I’ve had with the town. Absolutely. We have always had a blast. Everybody has been simply fantastic. I want to sit down with all the department heads and say thank you.”

Meanwhile, it didn’t take long for Oz fans to respond to the news. At 10:45 a.m. today 97 people had already e-signed a petition entitled “Save the Chesterton Wizard of Oz Festival.”

Visit www.thepetitionsite.com

Posted 2/12/2013