Highlands Food and Wine Festival

Supporting Needs

The Highlands Food and Wine Festival, set for November 10-13, brings a unique flavor to life on the Highlands-Cashiers Plateau.

Louis Osteen

As it has for the last six years, the Highlands Food and Wine Festival will take place the second weekend of November (November 10-13), transforming this small town into a landscape of wine and food tastings, seminars, and elbow-brushing with celebrity chefs. Sprawled across the city in restaurants and event spaces, the four-day gala highlights the talents of local and regional chefs at happenings from a food truck round-up to formal dinners, an oyster roast and the renowned “Sunday Shindig.” Under tents at Kelsey-Hutchison Founders Park and on Main Street, craft brewers, spirit distillers and wine personalities man booths and tables distributing samples to eager attendees. Again, this year, tickets to all the “big” events were sold out within minutes.

Owned by Highlands Festivals Inc., a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that also owns the spring music festival, Bear Shadow, HFW has secured and boosted Highlands’ reputation as a center for food, wine and music lovers. The organization is dedicated to promoting Highlands as a world-class culinary, lodging, shopping and outdoor lifestyle destination. More than just a chance to party, the festivals lure visitors to the Plateau during the shoulder seasons. As Festivals Inc. President David Bock says, “For many attendees, it’s their first time visiting the Plateau, and they are encouraged to return and to perhaps eventually move here.” Still, there’s another side of the festivals that is lesser known. They’ve been powerful vehicles in raising money for essential community services and supporting local and educational endeavors. “Because HFW is a culinary event it made sense to support the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) with a scholarship while simultaneously honoring an individual for whom we all had a great love and fond memories,” says Bock. And so, the Louis Osteen Scholarship at CIA was created. To date $67,500 has been funded toward the total endowment, and one scholarship awarded thus far with another scheduled for this fall. Another key goal – subsidizing distinctive Highlands entities – was realized with this year’s donation of $9,500 to Friends of Founders Park and $10,000 each to the Highlands Biological Center and the Highlands-Cashiers Land Trust on behalf of Bear Shadow. The Highlands Food Pantry received $36,000 from previous festivals. Summing up, Bock explains that, “There are lots of needs in our communities and we are lucky to be able to support them, as we will continue to do as the festivals expand and generate more funds.”

by Marlene Osteen

Community Collaborative

A new program maps a sustainable future for the Cashiers Valley.

As sponsor of the Urban Land Institute Advisory Services growth management analysis, the Cashiers Area Chamber of Commerce will continue its leadership commitment to inclusivity and transparency. At the chamber’s invitation, representatives of the Cashiers Area Community Planning Council, Chamber Board, Cashiers Historical Society, Highlands Cashiers Land Trust, Develop Cashiers Responsibly, and Vision Cashiers recently met to discuss next steps as recommended in the Panel’s final report. ULI suggested specific functions and roles for community organizations in Cashiers (you can see the matrix on page 28 of the printed report available at CashiersAreaChamber.com). This goal of the first “Cashiers Community Collaborative” organizational meeting on June 28 was to confirm these stakeholder champions’ commitment to a coordinated approach to community projects and funding. The group agreed that discipline will be needed to ensure that collective efforts and resources are used as efficiently as possible. Priorities will be set up so that financial and other help from local, state and federal governments and other funding sources will be solicited in unified manner to avoid parochial competition. Other stakeholders and supporters will be invited to take part in the initiative as plan details develop. One of the major functions recommended by ULI is creation of a nonprofit community development corporation to find and manage funding options for the purchase and lease of diverse products in an expanded housing market. The ULI said building attainable housing and promoting mixed-use development will help address critical workforce needs, which they called “an existential crisis for Cashiers’ small businesses and institutions.”

Research is now underway to decide the best structure for the 501(c)(3) nonprofit and to recruit an expert to establish initial operations and sustainable systems. In its report, the ULI Panel recognized that Cashiers is a “special place” and the opportunity and challenges ahead are to grow either by default or by design. The Cashiers Community Collaborative participants will work with other stakeholders in the future to ensure we address inevitable growth with proactive strategies that, as the ULI Panel advises, “ensure the qualities that have made Cashiers special will not be diminished.”

Periodic updates on the collaborative’s work will be presented at monthly Cashiers Planning Council meetings. by Stephanie Edwards Executive Director, Cashiers Area Chamber of Commerce