The city announced last week that a record 102,400 people attended the festival, which was held July 31 to Aug. 2 at Coffman Park.

The crowd topped the previous record of more than 93,000 people in 2007. About 92,000 people attended the event last year.

City officials were anticipating 100,000 guests this year, believing people were looking for vacations close to home because of the struggling economy.

The $10 admission and beverage prices were kept consistent with last year's prices.

Alison LeRoy, an events administrator with the city, said attendance was up on Friday and Sunday during the three-day festival.

On Friday, 25,500 people attended the festival, up 34 percent from 2008.

Sunday's attendance topped 2008 by 19 percent, with 27,500 people.

"We really did see a huge increase on Friday and Sunday, which was really our big goal this year," LeRoy said. "Saturday is already at capacity."

Saturday's attendance was 47,500, which was slightly higher than 2008.

Despite the 10-percent increase in attendance this year, LeRoy said there weren't many problems.

"This was one of our really good years. Friday night was such a big night, so we were a little worried at first because we started think-ing, 'Are we going to run out of things?' " she said.

"We really didn't have any problems because we were able to spread out the crowd" over the whole weekend.

LeRoy said city staff has projected a 9-percent increase in revenue for the event. Last year's festival made $200,000 -- $1.5-million in revenues with expenditures of $1.3-million.

The exact revenue should be known in September after all the bills have been paid, LeRoy said.

Information from online and on-site surveys is forthcoming as well.

"We have a group of Otterbein (College) students who are working on compiling the data. They did an on-site survey as a volunteer project," LeRoy said. "We'll combine (the information) with the results from the online survey."

jnoblit@thisweeknews.com

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