Popular Edmonds Halloween event canceled

EDMONDS, Wash. - There is a lot of disappointment in Edmonds this week after the Chamber of Commerce announced it is canceling the popular downtown trick-or-treating event.

Greg Urban, the chamber president, says the event that has been going on for 30 years and brings up to 10,000 people into the downtown area. With the ongoing pandemic, Urban says it’s just not safe to bring that amount of people together.

This is just the latest event the chamber has been forced to cancel, and Urban says that has created a real hit to fundraising and the budget. It's a threat to the very existence of the Edmonds Chamber of Commerce.

“Losing ‘The Taste of Edmonds’ was an immediate $100,000 hole in our budget,” said Urban. “So we got to the point where a volunteer committee came together and created a hero campaign.”

The new campaign, “Be an Edmonds Kind of Hero,” has a goal is to raise $100,000 by the end of the year. Urban says if the goal isn’t met, that could be the end of a chamber of commerce that has been around for 113 years.

The chamber has enlisted help from local celebrity Rick Steves, a travel expert who also runs a business in Edmonds.

“The chamber is like a community toolshed for all the small businesses that make a town of Edmonds, such a great spot,” said Steves. “We’re trying to raise awareness about the value of that. The fact that the streets of Edmonds will be empty on this Halloween is a reminder that events like this that we so appreciate are only possible when we have a chamber of commerce, and that means a reasonably funded chamber of commerce.”

For more information on the fundraising effort click here.

Though this year’s downtown trick or treating is cancelled in Edmonds, the chamber is still putting on an online costume contest.

For more information on that, click here.