Late last year, City of Page Recreation and Community Services Director Lynn Cormier and Special Event Coordinator Sheri Ptacek were tasked by city management with “enhancing the events” in Page.

With the closure of Navajo Generating Station in 2019, Page has come to rely more heavily on tourism, and special events are an important way to draw increasing numbers of visitors to the region. 

“Our job is to keep the tourists here for all our businesses, restaurants, hotels, etcetera,” Cormier said. “So, we were asked to please work on expanding special events, and stimulating and increasing the activity with the existing ones that we have.”   

That directive led to the organization of Page’s inaugural Fine Art Festival last April, and the city has high hopes that it will blossom into a major annual event that will attract big crowds of artists, musicians and tourists to the area each spring. 

Another new event for this year is Dog Days of Summer, scheduled for September 10. The new pup-fest, which will be held in John C. Page Park from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., is being organized by the city in conjunction with Natalie Ferrando, director of the Page Animal Adoption Agency.

“Natalie is putting together a bunch of activities for our dog lovers in town,” Cormier said.

Prospective activities include demonstrations by Page Police Department’s two new drug detection K-9s; vendors selling items related to pets; a variety of contests, including best trick and owner/dog pair that look most alike; a pet adoption booth; and an information session on spaying and neutering pets. 

“We’re also going to have a band, so anybody can come out with or without a dog. Their dogs just have to be on a leash,” Cormier said.

As usual, other upcoming city-organized events include Trunk or Treat on Oct. 31 and Christmas in the Park on Nov. 26.  

“Every year, Trunk or Treat gets larger and larger. That will be Monday, Oct. 31. Last year we had an unbelievable amount of people and organizations, both private and businesses that came out,” Cormier said.

The city has also taken over management of the Page Balloon Regatta, which had previously been organized by the Page Lake Powell Balloon Regatta Committee. 

Cormier said this year’s event, which will be held Nov. 3-6, will mostly stay the same as past years. One change will be the shifting of the vendor fair, which is organized each year by the Page Lake Powell Chamber of Commerce, onto Elm Street from the Elm Street Plaza parking lot. 

This change is made possible by recent work done by Page Utility Enterprise to upgrade the power supply on Elm Street, which will allow more electricity to be available to vendors setting up on the road, which will be blocked to traffic during the fair. 

“In the past, the vendor fair has encompassed that entire parking lot block. As a city, we always feel bad when that happens because all those businesses are landlocked for four days. It really impinges them being able to conduct business,” Cormier said.

Instead, vendors will set up on Elm Street and in the parking lot along Elm but farther out from the store fronts in the plaza so the businesses there can still attract customers. The entire area in front of Mesa Theater and the Hub will remain open for parking.

“This will be a much better layout. Elm Street would actually give an extra 30 or 40 spaces for vendors compared to what they had with the old layout,” Cormier said. 

With these four big city-organized events on the horizon, along with a slew of private events – including several golf tournaments, the Lake Powell Half Marathon in October and another upcoming motocross race – there will be plenty for locals and visitors to do in Page this fall.  

“One hundred percent of our focus is what can we do to keep the residents happy and active, in a balance with what can we do to also incorporate our visitors so when they’re here they have plenty to do, there’s always something going on, or they come and they stay for extra days, which is really what we want,” Cormier said.