Can you help us plan this charitable event?

David Hilliard, owner of the Lodge at Old Trail, in collaboration with Ellen King, of King Family Vineyards are interested in planning an annual event for Crozet charities, with the charities varying each year.   This year, the date will be the third Thursday of September, September 20, 2012.

I'm writing to ask that you join me, David, and Ellen at a meeting to beginning planning this event.  We'd like to get as many Crozet charitable organizations as possible involved in the event as possible.

We are meeting in the pub at the Lodge at Old Trail, Wednesday, July 25 at 7:00 pm.  Please sign in at the front desk.

Contact Tim Tolson via phone or email if you'd like to help with the planning and execution of this event. 

More about this charitable event

The event would be an Iron Chef like cook off, using local restaurant chefs, to be held at The Lodge at Old Trail.  David's already gotten several chefs who are interested in participating.  The idea is to invite several local chefs to square off and sell tickets to the event. The Lodge would provide some appetizers and one drink for the price of the ticket, that costs, maybe $20.The hope is  75% of the ticket price would go to charities and some would go to operations. Maybe that split could be higher. Then we would have a cash bar and certain proceeds of that would also go to the charities.  Their idea is that this year the proceeds would go to both the new Crozet Library fundraising (Build Crozet Library) and the Claudius Crozet Park./p>

The reasons behind the event:

1. To raise money for Crozet charities.
2. To pull Crozet restaurants and chefs  together and let folks know we've got some great restaurants here.
3. To make people realize Crozet can be a destination point
4. To raise awareness of needs of Crozet and the non-profit organizations in the community.

David is willing do a mailing to his lists and also advertise in all papers and TV  Staunton/Waynesboro/Charlottesville/Wintergreen/Fluvanna. Lee Catlin, Albemarle County's Assistant to the County Executive for Community and Business Partnerships is willing to help with advertising as well as Ellen King.

We could set up certain rooms in The Lodge for the Crozet Library displays and also the Crozet Parks displays.  If we had 300 people attend we would be able to raise $4500.00, plus the sales of liquor not to mention the awareness of the people that might attend that you all could look at as potential larger donors.

If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to call or email, contact information is below.

Looking forward to our meeting and planning this fun community event.

I hope by now you have your electricity back and are recovering from last Friday night's derecho (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derecho)

Please mark your calendar for a meeting Wednesday, July 11 at 7:30 PM at the CVFD  fire house (around back, through the glass doors).

We'd like to have everyone who was planning on participating in last Saturday's  aborted Crozet Independence Day Parade,
Celebration, and Fireworks come to a meeting next Wednesday, July 11 at 7:30 at the Crozet Fire house.

We need to share what worked well, what needs improvement, what we might add, what we might drop, and anything
else you have to say about this year's (non-)event.

Let's talk about it now, while it's still all fresh in our minds, so we can use what we learned to make next year's event better.

As always, don't hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions or concerns.

Thanks very much,
  Mike, Sandy, and Tim

Update: The fire marshall will not issue fireworks shooting permit, for the safety reasons.  Crozet Park is not yet a safe venue and fire departments are maxed out. 
Disappointing but understandable.   We'll be back next year!  Please spread the word to your neighbors and friends.   Be safe.

One of the park pavilions collapsed, lots of tree damage.  

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