Vendors complain about organizers of ‘Winterfest’ at Brooklyn Museum

December 14, 2018 Raanan Geberer Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Peeved patrons and vendors are likening the failed holiday attraction to a scam. Eagle file photo by Liliana Bernal

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It’s not only customers who are feeling cheated by the Winterfest holiday attraction behind the Brooklyn Museum. Some vendors, who paid thousands to sell their wares at the temporary marketplace, also say they are feeling scammed by Winterfest’s organizers.

Winterfest opened on Nov. 23 and is scheduled through Dec. 31. The press release announcing its opening said the space, which is normally part of a parking lot, would feature shopping, entertainment, a Santaland, a slide, a large menorah, a giant snow globe, a tree maze and more.

From the beginning, customers complained that Winterfest did not contain either the promised slide or the snow globe and that a “Chocolate Experience” was actually a tent that served instant cocoa and Halloween candy, Bklyner reported.

Several of Winterfest’s 50 artisans and vendors have reported similar problems. For example, Pamela Barsky, a maker of novelty canvas bags, said that from the time she arrived, she noticed problems with electrical power, including “no power at all during 12 hours of set up,” Bklyner said.

The Brooklyn Museum, in a statement, emphasized that the museum itself did not organize Winterfest – it merely licensed part of its parking lot “for the purpose of presenting a five-week holiday market. … We are extremely disappointed that the organizers have failed to live up to their promises, and we have conveyed our concerns to them.”

Winterfest is organized by Millennial Entertainment Group, which also presents Boston Winter and Vegas Winter.