After the Big Red Apple Festival’s 2020 hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the City of Cornelia is ready to welcome back the crowds of festival-goers to Cornelia’s downtown for the 33rd annual Big Red Apple Festival.
This Saturday, Sept. 25, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., the streets of Downtown Cornelia will be lined with food, vendors, live music, kids activities, cornhole, entertainment and more free fun for the entire community.
This year’s festival organizer, Tourism Coordinator Lindsey Fitzgerald, says the community’s support of the festival this year is important. The small businesses that make the Big Red Apple Festival what it is have faced the economic impacts of COVID-19, and many are struggling.
“A lot of these places [businesses] are struggling at this time and could use the support and the love,” she says.
This is Fitzgerald’s first time organizing Cornelia’s well-known festival and tradition, and while she says putting it all together has been hectic, she’s loved finding vendors from Habersham and learning about their businesses. She says finding people who don’t know Cornelia has been another kind of exciting adventure.
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“It’s been a lot of fun, reaching out to different people and getting them to come here,” she says. “A lot of the people don’t necessarily know Cornelia. So they’re excited to come here to our little small town, which has been exciting and pretty cool. It’s going to bring people in and people that didn’t know that [Cornelia] is here or things that we offer.”
What’s new?
Fitzgerald has worked to secure new kinds of vendors this year; attendees can look forward to jewelry, boutique and artisan vendors alongside food vendors attending from as far away as Macon and Athens. This will also be Cornelia’s first Big Red Apple Festival in their entertainment district, meaning that alcohol will be available for purchase and consumption during the event.
Fender’s Alley will host all the festival’s live entertainment from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. on their outdoor stage, and a few other new downtown businesses will experience their first-ever Big Red Apple Festival. The brand-new Community Brew & Tap and Cornelia’s charcuterie go-to, The Gathering Box, will both have their grand openings on the same day of the festival.
COVID-19 policies
While the event has no specific COVID-19 guidelines in place, Fitzgerald says anyone who wants to wear a mask is more than welcome to.
“We want to make sure that everyone is completely comfortable,” Fitzgerald says. “We will have Germ-X stations and masks provided in our information booth, as well as in here at the [Train] Depot, we’ll make sure that [we have] all that good stuff to make sure people can clean up.”
She says that since the event is outside, individuals can choose to partake or not partake in whatever COVID-19 mitigation measures they feel comfortable with.
“Whatever anyone feels comfortable with, the decision [is] for the family,” Fitzgerald says.
The Center for Disease Control says that masks are typically not necessary in outdoor settings. However, if an area has rising cases of COVID-19 and/or low vaccination rates like Habersham does, they recommend masking up in crowded outdoor areas.
Read more about masking guidance from the CDC here.
More information about this year’s Big Red Apple Festival, such as entertainment schedules, maps, FAQ and event details are available on the city’s Facebook page.
