After Sour Start, Brookhaven Cherry Blossom Festival Turns Five

BROOKHAVEN, GA -- The Brookhaven Cherry Blossom Festival returns in March for its fifth straight year next month, set for March 30-31 at Blackburn Park. The event runs from 10 am to 6 pm each day, and admission is free. Officials said a lineup is close to being announced.

Brookhaven's cherry blossom began in 2015 and its first event was immediately mired in a controversy involving two of its highest-salaried employees. Then-City Manager Marie Garrett had hired Rosemary Taylor, both of whom had earned six-figured salaries for the city of Johns Creek earlier in their careers, as communications director. The position had been a revolving door since the city's incorporation, but only one month into her tenure, Taylor made some ill-advised comments regarding some models who'd been hired to appear at the first cherry blossom festival.

Taylor told a photographer at the event that a pair of models he had brought with him were "not the type of people the city of Brookhaven want representing them." The models, one of whom was Asian and the other African-American, were almost immediately asked to leave the festival by another official.

Taylor was fired days after the event, and later said her comments had nothing to do about race but instead "a lack of professionalism on behalf of the photographer, a conflict of interest, misuse of city funds and money spent unnecessarily."

Read More: Taylor Responds To Cherry Blossom Festival Incident

For her part, Garrett, who had been earning more than $200,000 a year as Brookhaven's first city manager, was unceremoniously fired less than a year later and physically escorted from City Hall in a compensation dispute.

For the second year, Brookhaven is partnering with Splash Festivals and Live Nation. Splash will operate the Arts & Crafts Market and ever-popular Kidz Zone as well as handle logistics for the event. Splash also manages festivals in Dunwoody, Norcross, Johns Creek, Alpharetta and other locations. Last year, they successfully tripled the size of previous markets, bringing some 100 vendors to the festival.

The festival will also bring back perennial favorites such as the Classic Car Show, Pet World
and food trucks. The car show will be returning on Saturday, March 30. The 5K road race,
sponsored by Oglethorpe University and designated as a 2019 Peachtree Road Race qualifier,
has grown so in popularity that it will now kick off the weekend before the festival and will take
place Saturday, March 23. All registration fees will go directly to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.

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Image Karen Hatchett