The fear of bad weather late Saturday night prompted organizers of Denver’s 38th annual Oktoberfest to cancel the final leg of the six-day event Sunday.
As it turned out, most of Sunday was a perfect autumn day until a brief rain shower rolled through downtown Denver about 4 p.m.
“You can imagine I was surprised to wake up Sunday morning with the sun shining,” said Oktoberfest director Margaret Ebeling, the event’s coordinator.
She could not estimate the financial loss of canceling the last day. She said that if bad weather had limited the crowd Sunday to a few hundred, the cost of overhead would have sank the festival’s bottom line.
Organizers contacted vendors, sponsors and volunteer groups Saturday night before making the decision to cancel, Ebeling said, with a stiff wind gusting through Lower Downtown on Saturday night and forecasters expecting rain and cold Sunday.
A handful of other Oktoberfest celebrations across the state went on as planned Sunday.
The LoDo festival has been canceled three times since 2000 – for snow that year, and in 2001 in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The event usually draws more than 250,000 visitors over the two three-day weekends, but Sundays are usually the slowest days and the last Sunday is usually the slowest single day, Ebeling said.
“I was looking at it strictly from a financial standpoint,” she said. “… From a financial standpoint, it was the right decision.”
Oktoberfest costs about $500,000 to stage but had an economic impact of $11.4 million in 2004, according to a market-research study.
Organizers relocated the event this year from its traditional location on Larimer Square to the Ballpark neighborhood a few blocks away on Larimer Street between 20th and 22nd streets.
While attendance had been up the first weekend this year, it tailed off Saturday with numerous downtown events that siphoned off revelers, including a Rockies playoff baseball game, Ebeling said.
Broncos home football games, such as the one Sunday, also have hurt attendance in the past, she said.
Denver’s Oktoberfest bills itself as one of the city’s longest-running festivals and one of the United States’ largest fall festivals for German culture.
The fete originated in Germany in 1810, as a celebration of the marriage of Crown Prince Ludwig and Princess Therese.
Joey Bunch: 303-954-1174 or jbunch@denverpost.com
