Milton Theatre to scale back Pride, move Zombie Fest to Hudson Fields

Big changes are coming for Milton Theatre’s two signature festival events this year due to what theater officials say are rising costs associated with closing the streets.

First up, the annual Pride Festival, slated for Saturday, June 14, will be scaled back so the entire event will take place on theater grounds, Marketing Director JP Lacap said. 

“As always, we’re looking forward to a day full of joy, community and celebration,” Lacap said. “We’re leaning into a more intimate, curated experience – still vibrant and meaningful, just on a smaller scale.”

In addition, the annual Zombie Fest, which takes place in October, will be moved to Hudson Fields this year. 

The theater’s moves come on the heels of the Milton Chamber of Commerce pausing its annual Horseshoe Crab and Shorebird Festival, slated for Memorial Day weekend. In the chamber’s postponement announcement, Executive Director Jessica Velazquez-Schlegel said, “Several key challenges – including, but not limited to, resource constraints limiting space and capacity, and rising costs causing funding gaps that take time to solve – made planning this year's event to the standards you have come to expect more difficult than we had anticipated or are able to overcome.”

The possibility that the theater would move its big events was on the mind of Milton Town Council April 7, as members debated the idea of amending the town’s fee schedule to lower the police staffing cost from $100 per officer, per hour to $65 per officer, per hour.

A police officer staffing fee is a relatively new development in Milton, as the town sought to offset the cost of having extra police for events. The fee has risen over the last few budget cycles from $50 to $65, to $100 this year. Other towns charge similar fees; for example, Dewey Beach charges $55 per officer, per hour, and Milton Police Chief Derrick Harvey said at the April 7 meeting that Milton officers have been paid $90 per officer, per hour, to supplement Rehoboth Beach officers during the annual Sea Witch Festival.

Mayor John Collier said the town has been able to supplement the cost of police staffing for events with grant funds to keep the fees down, but those grant funds have dried up. He said Harvey has also been able to secure the services of Delaware Department of Transportation officials to close the streets at no cost to the town. 

In the leadup to council’s discussion April 7, the theater had let council know that it might have to downsize or move its two events if the fees were not changed. Councilwoman Randi Meredith asked for the matter to be put on the agenda for discussion.

“Why do we have to be the villains?” Collier asked. “This is a habit the town began many years before any of us got to the table because we used to do it as a courtesy, and gratis, and it just got unsustainable. A reduced fee is better than no fee, but what if we lower it now, and they’re still not happy?”

Councilman Scotty Edler said the chamber canceling Horseshoe Crab Fest and the theater moving Zombie Fest aren’t totally due to town fees. He said the chamber had other financial issues beyond fees that led to the cancellation, and the theater had indicated to him that it wanted to make Zombie Fest bigger and may have just outgrown downtown Milton.

“I think lowering the fees may help a little bit with some of this, but some of these events have gotten so big, they’re not fitting in their environment anymore,” Edler said.

Complicating matters for the council as far as lowering the fee goes, is that Irish Eyes paid the fee to hold the St. Patrick’s Day parade this year. 

“How do you justify to them, ‘Well, you paid it, guys, [but] we’re gonna change our mind and lower it,’” Councilman Tom Arkinson said. 

Meredith moved to lower the fee, but that motion failed due to lack of a second. Edler then moved to deny the proposed fee change, and that motion passed 6-1, with Vice Mayor Lee Revis-Plank opposed.