Wiscasset Area Chamber of Commerce members voiced hope Dec. 10 that, in 2016, a pair of events they are exploring will get more people spending time in town. 

One, possibly featuring a scarecrow contest, fireworks, live music and a chili cookoff, would bookend Wiscasset Parks and Recreation Department’s fall scarecrow festival; the other, an amateur kayak race, might coincide with a long-running summer race on the Sheepscot River, according to the task forces exploring the ideas.

“I think we’ve got two powerful ideas that I think could really work,” the chamber board’s president Sherri Dunbar said. “I’m excited.”

The meeting at Morris Farm followed up on a Nov. 10 brainstorming session. Plans call for the task forces to keep working, then meet with the chamber’s full board in March.

That’s far enough out to allow breathing room, Carriage House Gardens owner Lucia Droby said. She and others cited the need to be careful with the events’ scope for year one, so the chamber can pull off both, then replicate and possibly enlarge them.

Success will depend in part on the chamber growing its relationship with the town government, to help the events run smoothly and safely, Lincoln County Regional Planning Commission’s economic and community development director Mary Ellen Barnes said. “The relationship ... is critical.”

As for the new scarecrow event, the plan would be to avoid running activities the same hours as the town’s scarecrow festival at the municipal building, Dunbar said. Task force members discussed having scarecrows along Route 1 for Columbus Day weekend, the weekend prior to the town’s event, Dunbar said.

“We don’t want to take away from that. That’s a great thing,” she said.

In the chamber’s event, people and businesses would enter scarecrows for at-large voting and possibly also judging by a panel, chamber members said. Winners would be announced at an evening celebration the following Saturday on the waterfront, after the town scarecrow festival, Dunbar, of Tim Dunham Realty, said.

Besides a chili cookoff, live band, fire pit and fireworks, the event might include a lineup of brewery vendors, members said.

When describing early ideas for the summer kayak race, members of that task force emphasized the possibilities they saw in the river and the waterfront as an attraction. “It’s not Boothbay Harbor, it’s not Bar Harbor, it’s not Providence. But it’s got a lot of potential, and we’ve tried to build on that potential,” Barnes said.

“We were in full agreement on the one event we were going to do research on ... a Sheepscot River kayak regatta,” Droby said. The task force hopes to work with Seaspray Kayaking to add one amateur race this year to the race Seaspray has been putting on for years.

“This will increase community interest and help us truly get our feet wet,” Droby said.

The task force has contacted Seaspray Kayaking’s owner Scott Shea, who is open to talking about a possible arrangement, Frank Hansen, senior minister at Freedom Fellowship Church, told fellow chamber members.

Registrations, vendors and sponsors would fund the new race that could expand as the committee learns racing procedures and other aspects of putting on the event, Droby said.

“(The regatta) has the potential to be a signature event for the community that will draw ever-increasing interest and provide community benefits over the years,” Droby continued reading from a prepared statement. “We will start modestly, but as our experience and community interest (grow), so can the regatta to a multi-race and multi-day event.”

Stopping in briefly at the meeting’s outset, departing Town Planner Jamel Torres thanked the chamber for its help to the town and the business community.

“Keep fighting the fight,” he said.

The chamber will really miss Torres, Dunbar said. “He stepped right up, from the very beginning.”