Work has begun in earnest to organize this year’s Covington Days festival.

With Covington staff taking on a leadership role there will be some differences in the city’s annual summer festival yet it should feel familiar in many ways.

The Covington Days parade, for example, which has grown in popularity in recent years will continue with the help of Julie Stein, who is the executive assistant for MultiCare administrator Hugh Kodama. She has worked for several years coordinating the parade, explained Covington’s Community Relations Director Karla Slate.

This year, though, the parade will have a different route. During the past few years when the festival was at Cedar Heights Middle School the parade began at Jenkins Creek Elementary, went out to Southeast 272nd Street then headed east to Cedar Heights. There are three potential parade routes and it will still likely march down 272nd, Slate said, but it just depends on what works best in terms of traffic impact and safety.

That portion of the festival, Slate said, costs the most in terms of staff time with it equaling about $8,000 in 2012.

With the event set for July 20-21, it will be a bit smaller then last year with the location of the festival proposed for two sections of the Kohl’s parking lot in downtown Covington.

“We’re not changing the format of the festival dramatically but we’re working harder to make sure all of the elements complement each other and nothing gets left out because there’s not enough money,” Slate said. “We want to be consistent so people know what to expect when they get there. We want to get back to the family oriented focus of the festival and that means looking at the spectrum of entertainment and activities that cover the entire age range of the population.”

One element which will not change, Slate noted, was the festival’s affiliation with the region’s largest summer festival, Seafair.

“It will still be a Seafair sanctioned event and because of that we will be able to participate in Seafair meetings,” Slate said. “Not only will that help us with marketing and contacting vendors, it will also help us with learning about Seafair’s background. The first Seafair meeting is on marketing and sponsorship, which is awesome.”

Vendors who participated in last year’s event will be contacted while some who signed up for booths this year have called the city to see what the next steps would be thanks to notifications of the change in leadership by the Covington Lions Club, which organized the event from 2005-2012. The Lions voted to step away from the festival and the City Council approved a staff recommendation a few days later to take Covington Days on.

Slate said the 14 staff members who are involved in organizing the festival began meeting March 7. They are working on craft vendor applications. This will be restructured so that the arts and crafts fair vendors fit with the theme of that portion of the event. There will be a set percentage of craft vendors, likely the majority of permits issued, along with other vendors who will complement the theme, Slate said.

“We’re going to work really hard to get a diverse set of vendors that focus on the hand crafted items,” Slate said. “I’d like to encourage anyone in this community, Covington or Maple Valley, who are arts and crafters who didn’t think they could get a space because it was too expensive … to apply.”

Sponsorship opportunities will change, too, Slate explained. Previously there were different levels of sponsorship for the entire event. This year the goal is to get sponsors for each specific area or event to help cover costs of the festival.

“We’re really just going to focus on how the sponsors will get the best exposure,” Slate said. “We’re not going to go out asking for large amounts of money. I think we’ll also offer multi-event or multi-year events, so, if someone wants to sponsor all the entertainment for all the events (the city offers).”

With multi-event or multi-year sponsorships in place, Slate said, that will allow the city to plan more efficiently by eliminating the guesswork and unpredictability of short-term sponsorships.

City staff also hope to bring in service clubs, church groups and even local student service clubs or groups to provide activities which would serve as fundraisers for the group while providing a benefit to the festival.

Another critical element of the festival which is changing this year is shortening it from three days to two, with events and activities offered Saturday and Sunday.

“That way we can pool our resources rather than spread them out,” Slate said. “The core elements are entertainment, shopping, food and activities for kids and the family.”

This is what members of the community have asked for, Slate said, and the city will work to provide those elements.

On the entertainment front, Pat Patterson will work on the lineup as he has for years for the city, but he’s finalizing the Summer Concert Series first.

“He’s done a really good job of lining up entertainment the past couple years,” Slate said. “We shouldn’t line up all bands, we should do other things, whether it’s an illusionist or a comedian. We definitely want to mix it up.”

At this point, Slate said, the first priority is to get information out to potential vendors because this is the time of year when those folks are considering what festivals to sign up for. The next priority is to address the sponsorship strategy, get out in the community and develop relationships with potential sponsors. At the same time, Slate said, Stein is working on the parade logistics.

Once those elements fall into place, the city can begin to heavily promote the festival as well as notify those who will be impacted by the parade route.

Slate said she is excited for this year’s Covington Days festival.

“It’s very time consuming and it’s very hard work but it’s easier in the sense that we’re all here in one building … we can communicate on a daily basis and it makes it so we can focus more on the content of the festival,” Slate said.