Cambridge Businesses Ready for Ice & Oyster Festival

(CAMBRIDGE, Md) – The City of Cambridge is going to be one of the hottest places to be this weekend, despite the low temperatures.

Crews have been busy since Thursday night, moving hundreds of blocks of ice as the City of Cambridge kicks off its fifth annual Ice and Oyster Festival.

Bill Christopher with the Dorchester County Chamber of Commerce says the festival is easily one of the biggest weekends for Cambridge. It even stacks up against major holidays.

Bill tells WMDT, “I think if you go talk to any of the local restaurants and retail shops, they’re all going to tell you that it’s like a July weekend for them, in the middle of January. So sometimes better than a July weekend. But when we had this many people down because it really is concentrated.”

And so we went and spoke with several local businesses just a couple of blocks away from where the festivities are taking place. With some like Main Street Gallery opening their doors Friday night.

“The show is about oysters and love and art. But yeah, we love meeting people from all over the country. People really come from pretty far afield for these events in town,”” says Main Street Gallery’s Theresa Knight-McFadden.

Other businesses are opening their doors Saturday to offer festival-goers a brief reprieve from the cold. Excited at how much of a boom this is for the local economy in what’s usually the quietest month of the year.

Emily Salisbury, Co-Owner of Vintage 414 says, “It gets a nice bump for us. It really helps us, you know, get through the hard winter months here in downtown. And it’s it just keeps everybody kind of vibrant for a little extra time after the holidays…”

“We’d like to welcome everyone in. We have some sales that will be displayed, on different booths. We have about 40 different individual vendors here,” says Vintage Venue Manager, Michelle Ruark.

And as business owners prepare to welcome around 10,000 people to downtown Cambridge for the Ice and Oyster Festival, they’re hoping that this will be a nice little post-holiday boost.

The festivities are kicking off Friday night in Downtown Cambridge, and will be taking place all day Saturday.