Mayor Goetz looking to fill the void of Rockin’ River

MERRITT – Rockin’ River is not returning to Merritt in 2023 after Live Nation announced the cancellation.

Mayor Mike Goetz breaks down the implications of the festival not returning to the City.

“I mean the city at large, the community at large, and the vendors, it means a lot. It’s like a second Christmas, that people call it, won’t be here. It means less people coming to our community and it means less investment in our community, so yes it’s a big lose for us. One of things you have to look at is there is only so much money that people have and there’s only so much money out there. Everything is going up and of course the flood didn’t help out and it’s just a building block of a lot of things that just built up.”

This doesn’t mean the cancelation of summer though, as Goetz confirmed they are already in talks about how to replace it.

“I met with Tourism Nicola Valley (TNV) and we talked about going after another festival or going after smaller events that we can bring into town during the summer. Putting our heads together to find different things. One big thing is nice but if we have a selection of several smaller things it would bring people to our community. They [TNV] are going to work on that, the city is going to work on that, so you know it’s the old saying ‘as one door closes another opens’, that’s the mentality we have to have. I mean sure we will lick our wounds a little bit but we have to move forward and look ahead to the next thing that you can bring to the city, so that’s exactly what we are going to do.”

On January 27, Rockin’ River announced, due to economic obstacles, they would not be moving forward with the festival in Merritt. In the statement, they did mention looking at bringing it back in the future.