(Milford)– The Milford RAGBRAI Committee has announced the bands that will be performing July 20th, as that community hosts the first overnight stop on this year’s route. The Schmidt Brothers will be the headliner and Rock A La Carte will perform as the opening band. Entertainment Chairman Steve Anderson says they may be looking at a third band as well.
The announcement was made as part of an update on preparations at a community meeting Wednesday evening. Anderson says their greatest need now is volunteers…
“When you’ve got a town of, you know, over 3,000 people and you’ve got 20,000 people coming to town, it’s going to take a lot of volunteers to get it done. And volunteers don’t need to live in Milford. We know we’ve got some volunteers coming from different towns in the area and we’re welcoming any volunteers that want to come and help.”
Anderson says another big need they have is for camping and housing…
“The grass runway is one of the bigger areas. Memorial Park is connecting up at that area. We’re working on getting agreements with the private property owners so that they are, so there’s some liability coverage issues there and so we’ve been working through that and those are going out now. We’ve got quite a bit of the campground areas covered really well. We could always still use more. The more the better. On the housing side we have started getting people connected up, riders with people in town that are willing to allow riders to come camp in their yard or use some of their electricity and those things, so. We still need more of those. We’ve got a lot of people that are coming that would actually like to stay in people’s yards or front yards, back yards, those types of things. And so we need more people in town to start getting in there and showing us what they’re willing to allow people to use on their property.”
Anderson adds the entertainment area will encompass a several block area of downtown Milford…
“It’s going to be from about 8th Street up to about 14th Street, in that area, kind of in the downtown business area, and then a block either direction. We’re trying to, we’re going to keep it out of the housing areas, the residential areas, but keep it more in the downtown business area, so. What’s proposed right now is the beer garden will be in the City Hall parking lot, the concert will be close to that area, and then having vendors downtown but making it so that the downtown businesses can stay open and still have people walk through their business and check out the businesses.”
Highway 71, or Okoboji Avenue through that area, will be closed that day, Sunday, July 20th, pending approval by the Iowa D.O.T, with a detour. The road will reopen at 1:00 am Monday, July 21st. Anderson says there likely will be additional street closures but he says they aren’t sure yet where those will be.
