Today was the inaugural Bethlehem VegFest which took place on the Bethlehem Greenway on the South Side. By all accounts the event was a huge success. It was filled with vendors, demonstrations, musical acts, speakers and thousands of visitors. I was lucky enough to work with some great volunteers and saw a number of friends show up to support the event.

With VegFest taking place on the South Side a number of people were questioning where to park. According to the VegFest website:

The whole day features free parking courtesy of the Bethlehem Parking Authority. There are nearby garages as well as metered street parking

It was heavily promoted that patrons should park in the nearby Comfort Suites parking lot, on the street in any metered space or at the Starters Riverport parking deck and that while they may receive a “courtesy ticket” to thank them for coming to the festival, it would merely be a reminder that on a normal day they would get a real ticket if they didn’t pay. Unfortunately someone at the Bethlehem Parking Authority forgot that they agreed to this because numerous people received very real parking tickets at the Starters Riverport parking deck.

Downtown Bethlehem responded to the tweets about the parking mishap saying they would look into it and Jaime K of Save the Kales, one of VegFests organizers, posted on her blog today that she’s also aware of the problem and that she’ll be posting updates on her website as soon as she hears something. Hopefully this will get resolved quickly because short of this mishap, Bethlehem VegFest was a tremendous success.

Update: After tweeting out this post I got a direct message from Downtown Bethlehem which will be helpful to anyone who got a ticket today:

Sorry about any mistake with tickets on sside today-plz send ticket # to karaj@lehighvalleychamber.org and it will be taken care of!