King City Walk and Roll

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King City Walk and Roll Parade 2017.
King City Walk and Roll Parade 2017. Photo courtesty of Jaime Fender
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By  Barbara Sherman, Tigard Life

What if you threw a party and got a much-bigger turnout than expected?

That was the situation last year when the newly formed King City Community Foundation put together the first Walk & Roll Fourth of July Festival that included a parade, classic car rally and festival featuring kids’ activities, dozens of vendors’ booths, food and live music. About 400 people participated in the parade, and about 1,000 visited the festival.

King City is unique in that it is comprised of two distinct areas – the original 55-plus King City Civic Association subdivision built around a golf course in the 1960s, and the much-newer Edgewater on the Tualatin subdivision and surrounding areas that have attracted young families.

Each “side” has always held its own Fourth of July event: For a couple decades, the KCCA has hosted a parade where residents decorate their golf carts and drive through the streets, with residents of King City Senior Village (formerly Pacific Pointe Retirement Inn) acting as judges to determine the winners; meanwhile, Edgewater residents have held their own parade on the Fourth, decorating trikes and bikes and strollers in red, white and blue and walking to King City Community Park on the Tualatin River for a festival.

Members of the King City Community Foundation.
Members of the King City Community Foundation working on the citywide Fourth of July festival include (front row) Veva Goehler and (back row from left) Jaime Fender, Annie Paulse and Jessica Poehler. Photo courtesy of Jaime Fender.

Foundation members decided to plan a citywide event last year and were astounded at the turnout for the parade that started in the huge KCCA Clubhouse parking lot, meandered through the streets to the new section of town and ended in the park, where dozens of vendors – and a bounce house – were waiting.

King City Walk and Roll Fourth of July Festival
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Plans are getting finalized for this year’s event, and several foundation members, including Jaimie Fender, Veva Goehler, Annie Paulsen and Jessica Poehler, met June 18 to work on the plans and talk about expectations for this year.

There will again be a car rally in the KCCA Clubhouse parking lot, but it is being expanded to include not only classic but “hot” cars too.

Members of the new King City Girl Scouts group will assist Ken Miller & Associates in placing flags along the parade route, and the parade will have two grand marshals – Bob Olmstead and Billie Reynolds, both long-term King City City Councilors who are not running for re-election. And a special guest in the parade will be Sherwood High School student Stephanie Breazile of the Washington County Dairy Princess Team.

A Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue engine will be at the front of the parade as usual along with McGruff the Crime Dog and a school bus and driver provided by Student Transportation of America, which provides bus services in the Tigard-Tualatin School District.

Prizes will be awarded for the best entries, and this year the system will be better organized. Paulsen will take a photo, get contact information and assign a number to each entry, and Mayor Ken Gibson, who is riding in the parade again, will be the judge, awarding prizes based on the photos.

Foundation members are thrilled that the vendor count has grown from a couple dozen last year to 60 and growing this year. The Tone Brothers are returning to provide music and this year will be performing on a covered, elevated stage. “Those poor guys got so sunburned last year,” Fender said.

Another change this year will be a continuously running shuttle bus between various points in King City, including Deer Creek Elementary, where the parking lot will be available for use.

The foundation is partnering with a lot of local businesses and organizations to provide information, services and products at the festival, and people are encouraged to visit the KCCF Facebook or Linkedin pages to get the latest information about the parade and festival and ongoing community information.

“We had a great turnout last year for our first try, and it was a beta test for the vendors,” Fender said. “I think this year the park will feel full with vendors all the way around the track, and in the future we hope to fill the green area in the center.”

And most importantly, this year there will be two bounce houses.

For more information, visit www.facebook.com/KCCFOregon or www.Linkedin.com/company/KCCFOregon.

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