ALTAMONT — The Altamont Fair is going to host its own holiday light show rather than working with the Police Athletic League of Albany, which had hosted the Capital Holiday Lights display in Washington Park for decades.

Similarly, this fall the Altamont Fair hosted its own harvest festival rather than leasing the fairgrounds, as it had for decades, first to Altamont Orchards for a fall festival and then to the Capital Apple & Wine Festival.

Running from Nov. 22 through Jan. 4, the light show is selling tickets online for $18 per vehicle; tickets at the gate will cost $35 per vehicle on weekdays and $40 on weekends.

It had been announced last year that PAL, which used the light show money for youth programs, would bring the show to Altamont, but plans fell through for a 2023 show shortly afterward.

“Although we had planned to move forward with the Police Athletic League for their Holiday Lights, that did not come to fruition,” Altamont Fair spokeswoman Pat Canaday told The Enterprise this week. “We continued our search to bring a holiday event to the Altamont Fairgrounds.”

She added, “The Altamont Fair is not producing the event, but we are renting the fairgrounds.”

Altamont business-owner and PAL member Jonathan Phillips told The Enterprise that the not-for-profit organization was “trying to be pretty transparent” in the negotiations, but there was “a lot of resistance with trying to just have a proper game plan and move forward.” 

There were a number of logistical problems to solve for PAL to be able to make the show viable, Phillips said, and while there had been some progress initially, the two groups “could never finalize all the details.”

PAL spokeswoman Leanne Ricchiuti told The Enterprise that the issue came down to “modifications to a previously agreed upon contract from the Fairgrounds that we were unable to accommodate,” and that “after some back and forth, it appeared not to be a good fit.”

“Every effort was made to modify the show to fit the Altamont Fairgrounds, but it wouldn’t have been responsible to put on the show without every T crossed,” she said.

Phillips said the hope was to establish a long-term partnership with the fairgrounds that “would have made them a good sum of money based on the traffic that would get pulled through.”

Although the show had always been a fundraising event for PAL, Phillips said the group has other financial streams, so the main concern was preserving the show as a cultural institution for the region, calling it a “top-three Capital District event.” 

Ricchiuti said PAL has “been more active in securing grants to help make facility improvements to our Center, as well as expand some of our programming. We’ve also engaged with a couple of organizations and municipalities, like the Village of Lake George, to lease some of our displays for their own use. All of these things help support our programming, keeping our youth as the priority.”

She also said that, with over two decades of experience putting together a beloved show, “We have no doubt that we will be able to do that again.”

Despite the change in venue and management, local enthusiasm for the new show is evident on social media, where users are celebrating the news and defending the fairgrounds from detractors who worry about traffic and other quality-of-life impacts.

The PAL event was unpopular with some Washington Park neighbors perturbed by traffic congestion, causing PAL to look for a new venue. PAL organizers estimated that, from 1997, when the show opened in Albany, till it closed in 2022,  more than two million people had visited the display.

In response to one Altamont resident who said they were “not a fan” of more than a month of increased traffic, fairgrounds director Amy Anderson wrote on Facebook, “Well, fortunately, the fair owns Arlington which will remain open during November and December to stage traffic on and 95% of the event happens on the fairgrounds. I am so excited about the patrons this could bring to the local businesses that usually suffer during the winter months.”