There is an old saying that perception is reality. For a community known historically just as a tired old shoe and textile town, unless you make a visit a few miles north of I-95, that perception lingers. The challenging weekend weather-wise for the Great Falls Balloon Festival, typically a few days that draw many from away, certainly cast a long shadow on what should have been an uplifting weekend.

For many of its first years, the weather was a willing accomplice in successful balloon festivals. It is difficult for an event that relies on optimum weather, for its feature attraction to make an appearance, to have had such fortune.

With the economy being what it is, the festival committee publicly recognizing its financial situation, and poor weather driving down attendance, perhaps the stars are aligning not for bringing closure to this community event but rather seeking to reinvent it toward a new era for growth and prosperity.

What if the Great Falls Balloon Festival didn’t simply rely on the hot air balloons to rule the show, or on its volunteer board of directors to drive the logistics?

While it would take some breaking down of silos, Lewiston-Auburn may be ripe to merge one or more of its festivals to strengthen the position of the community on Maine’s tourism summer calendar. After all, tourism continues to be touted as Maine’s largest industry and the cities of the Androscoggin need their share of that pie.

With a state park just upstream on the river, miles of riverside trails, outdoor concert venues, renovated mills and fine restaurants, getting someone to visit here for the first time would likely yield return visits. The trick is, how do you get them here in the first place?

This year, the Androscoggin County Chamber of Commerce sponsored its 2nd Annual Grains and Grapes Festival. Intended to be a celebration of Maine-made beers and wines, the turnout was not a strong as was hoped, though still considered a success for the community. But for my dollar, I would much prefer to spend a summer day or evening outside in Maine than in an old ice rink in the middle of a residential neighborhood, even though it is a great facility.

Imagine a scenario where the Chamber of Commerce and the Balloon Festival organizers joined forces to combine the Grains and Grapes event and balloon festival into that third weekend in August.

Picture a Railroad (Simard-Payne) Park filled with visitors, in particular the young professionals demographic, on a Saturday afternoon perusing the booths of niche beer and wine makers. During the traditionally slow period between the morning and evening launches, the park could be filled with thousands of people who move from the sample lines to the food vendors, providing them with much needed business.

Lewiston-Auburn has invested tens of millions of dollars in its riverfront, and it only seems fitting to fully leverage that for most of the community festivals. How many brew-fests in New England take place on historic waterfronts? How many brew-fests offer the views of hot air balloons launching from that same waterfront?

And if the opportunity is to set this festival apart from others in New England, what if we branched beyond being Maine-centric and opened up this celebration of niche beer and wine to the international northeast?

Inviting great microbrews from Vermont, Massachusetts, or elsewhere in the northeast United States could broaden our reach. In addition, with this community’s deep Canadian roots, perhaps inviting brewers to our north might catch the attention of the hundreds of thousands who visit Maine from Canada every summer.

Should inclement weather ground the balloons, concerts and opportunities at local restaurants may keep those visiting for Grains and Grapes in the community and in the downtown area; a crowd lacking right now in bad weather for the balloon festival and a location not seen by many attendees at Grains and Grapes because it takes place at the Colisee.

Sharing logistics, partnering on promotions, and building a bigger festival with more punch, could put Lewiston-Auburn on the map as an innovative place that seeks to leverage its unique location.

The river makes for opportunities for many analogies and, in this case, a fairly straightforward one. If we can convince a few organizations currently operating separately to paddle together and in the same direction, we could really get this community moving.

Jonathan LaBonte, of New Auburn, is a columnist for the Sun Journal and an Androscoggin County Commissioner. E-mail: [email protected].