Folk Festival Finds Alcohol Ban Workaround

Mike Cole is the park manager at Bicentennial Mall.

This weekend’s National Folk Festival is expected to be the largest single event ever held at Bicentennial Mall. Other festivals have shied away from the venue because of a ban on alcohol.

Bicentennial Mall is actually a state park, and as such, the consumption of alcohol is prohibited.

Michael Cole is the head ranger.

“Tennessee state parks are all about family. That’s one of the reasons we don’t have alcohol in our state parks. But it was one of the considerations in putting this event on. So actually the alcohol is being served outside the park.”

It doesn’t look or feel outside the park boundaries, but technically the corner of Jefferson Street and 8th Avenue is not within Bicentennial Mall. So that’s where festival organizers have isolated the so-called “beer gardens.”

This is the first of three years Bicentennial Mall will host the Folk Festival. An estimated 80-100,000 are expected to come. Park officials say that’s more than any other single event since the Mall opened in 1996.