Sun City Center

Community FunFest expands guest list

For the first time, organizers of Sun City's annual party invite residents of surrounding communities.

By JAY CRIDLIN
© St. Petersburg Times
published February 28, 2003

The secret's out. Sun City Center is having a party.

After several years of under-the-radar operation, organizers of the community's annual FunFest have decided to start promoting their event -- albeit in a very cautious manner.

"This year, we felt we should probably open it up," said Fred Kroog, chairman of the event's entertainment committee.

The event has been a success in Sun City Center for three years, with live acts and booths for dozens of Sun City Center's craft clubs drawing thousands of people, mostly from Sun City Center and King's Point.

This year, Kroog expects more than 150 performers, 50 different acts and 5,000 people to attend the March 22 event. He said it would be a shame for surrounding communities, such as Ruskin or Riverview, to miss out on FunFest, which is free to the public from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

"We're not particularly inclined to bring in people from well outside our community, and yet there's room for people," Kroog said. "It's certainly something that people might have an interest in, and we'd like to make sure that at least the immediate area knows what's happening."

John Bowker, who is handling publicity for the event, said the promotion is just a neighborly invitation to those surrounding communities, not an indication that the festival is set to become another Strawberry Festival.

"We're kind of waltzing a little bit with the publicity," he said. "There was no discussion about going more broad."

It's not that the residents of Sun City Center have been trying to avoid out-of-towners. Rather, their main reason for keeping FunFest a secret in the past was a lack of parking.

"It's strictly because of parking," Bowker said. "We're going to have a hell of a time, because they're going to be repaving 674."

In fact, he said, if more than a few thousand people were to show up, the community would be in a real traffic pickle. He said people are being asked to park at the Community Hall on South Pebble Beach Boulevard, where shuttles will take them to the main fair.

"We would have a terrible time if we got 7,000 or 8,000 people down here," Bowker said. "It would be so bad that a year later, nobody would come."

Sloan McKernan, president of the Stain Glass Club, which will have a booth at FunFest, is hopeful parking won't be too bad this year.

"That one day gets pretty busy, but they do have parking over at the Community Center on South Pebble Beach," he said. "They ask us, the residents, to use our golf carts and leave our cars at home."

McKernan said that on the whole, he's happy with the decision to open up the event.

"We can get the word out about the community and what's available here," he said.

Other groups, though, aren't as welcoming of the move.

"It would be nice to have people come and see what we do, but we have so many people that do come that it's difficult to take care of the ones that come just from the area," said Lois Olson, president of Sew'n Sews.

However, Olson did say it might be a good idea to expand in the future.

"I think it would be nice to have other people to be aware of it, because we do have some very talented people here," she said.

Kroog said the key to a manageable FunFest is keeping word-of-mouth confined to southeast Hillsborough County.

"I'm not sure that we're going to have that big a problem, that we can't accommodate people from Ruskin and Riverview, perhaps immediate areas, without bringing in a lot of people from Tampa or even Brandon," he said.

Added Bowker: "It would be downtown Tampa or St. Pete that would probably hurt."

-- Jay Cridlin can be reached at 661-2442 or cridlin@sptimes.com .