By Greg Fry

UPDATE: Overlanders Day planners find alternate location

Aug 22, 2018 | 9:37 AM

KAMLOOPS — UPDATE: Organizers of this year’s Overlanders Day celebrations have found a new location.

North Shore Business Improvement Association Executive Director Jeremy Heighton says the event will now take place on Sunday Sept. 23 at Brock Park.

“Immediately next to Brock Pool. It is absolutely perfect for what we’re hoping to do.”

He says Brock Park is actually a slightly larger space than McDonald Park which Heighton notes gives them the chance “to expand a bit” more.

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The event will run from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. and follows news this morning that the Kamloops Kidney Walk possessed a permit to hold their walk Sept. 23 at McDonald Park.

“It was really unfortunate. We looked for opportunities to work together but it became apparent really early on that there weren’t, so we just went a different direction and found a different location,” says Heighton. “Quite honestly we want to be very clear that we wish the Kidney Foundation a fantastic walk and hope they do very, very well.”

EARLIER: Organizers of Overlanders Day are busy looking for an alternate location to this year’s rescheduled event.

On Tuesday, the spokesperson for the event, Jeremy Heighton, executive director of the North Shore Business Improvement Association (NSBIA), announced organizers planned to move the event to Sept. 23 in McDonald Park after the event had to be postponed due to excessive wildfire smoke last Sunday.

However, that date doesn’t work for the organizers of this year’s Kamloops Kidney Walk, who say they’ve had a City of Kamloops event permit to hold their walk at the same location on Sept. 23 since last December.

One of the organizers of the Kidney Walk, Gregg Drinnan, says their permit runs from 7:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. that day.

“So, we’ll be in there setting up starting around 8:00 or 8:30 in the morning,” he tells CFJC Today. “If they were going to run when they want to run, from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., they would be setting up at the same time. They are far larger than we are and we’re just afraid of getting lost in their crowd.”

And getting lost in the Overlanders Day crowd wouldn’t be too hard considering the annual event draws around 10,000 people to the park.

Drinnan says there are other worries, too.

“We’re also concerned about some of our attendees who don’t walk. People with kidney disease and not being able to park and find access,” adds Drinnan, who notes they offered to clear out of the park by noon to allow for Overlanders Day organizers to set up their event and run things at a later time.

“But they were adamant they have to go 10:00 to 3:00 and couldn’t go to 1:00 to 6:00 or 2:00 to 7:00,” he says.

Drinnan says he only learned of the conflict through Twitter Tuesday morning.

For his part, Heighton says the NSBIA is working on finding an alternate location and hopes to have an announcement in the next 24 hours.