Old Dominion Festival update

With the (yet) pending sale of Old Dominion Brewing, there have been a lot of rumors concerning the brewery, one of which has been about the future viability of its Festival. Here's a comment on that gossip, which I've re-posted from DC-Beer.

Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2006 09:13:45 -0500
From: "Gregg Wiggins"
Subject: [DC-Beer] RE: Future of OD Fest

Since this latest version of the rumor that there won't be another Old Dominion Beer Festival is getting very broad distribution I thought I should jump in and bring my notes from a conversation I had earlier this week with Terry Fife. I'm planning to mention this in my next MABN column, but because by the time that hits the bar counters this will be a month-old story I doubt I'll go into the subject as extensively as I will here.

After we both had a laugh that Jerry Bailey used to have to knock down this rumor every couple of years and now it was his turn, Terry told me the land on which the festival is being held this year has been sold as part of a larger plan. "They’re going to start development on it, probably, in August. But, nobody really knows when that particular field, they’re going to start on that," he told me. "It could be this year, it could be years from now". Terry doubts this will be the last
year at the current site because there are other parts of the land in question that would be more logical to build on first.

And, saying "but we'll always have one," the inevitable development will mean the festival would move, not end, according to Terry Fife. (ooh, good sentence, I think I'll have to use that one in the column) "There is a possibility this is the last year we’ll be able to have it there. It may not be right out in our backyard. But it’ll always be somewhere."

I'm not doing this to trash our friendly brewspaper competition, and I don't remember having seen the column or article that contained the statement about future festivals. But, frankly, if they wrote "will" instead of "might" on this, ASN got it wrong.