It is true that all good things eventually come to an end, but that doesn’t make it any easier to accept the demise of the HomeLife Expo.
For 40 years, the three-day event was a rite of spring in the Upper Valley. As the sun got stronger and the sap started flowing, homeowners around region began gearing up to tackle the projects or repairs that had been gnawing at them all winter. The HomeLife Expo brought out scores of exhibitors — builders, home improvement contractors, equipment companies, landscaping and home decor outfits, energy suppliers, insurers and financial service firms — who set up booths and tables in Dartmouth’s Leverone Field House and stood ready to help “businesses and consumers to explore innovative opportunities to enhance their quality of life,” as the event’s website once proclaimed.
Those who have undertaken them know that home projects can be very disruptive. There’s noise and dust and dislocation and it always takes longer — sometimes much longer — than first anticipated. That’s why it’s so important to have a good relationship with the people doing the work. The HomeLife Expo gave homeowners the opportunity to meet face to face with service providers and product suppliers to ask questions, get ideas and begin to develop a relationship.
Then came the internet.
These days, homeowners and consumers do most of their research online. As Valley News business writer John Lippman reported, the idea of attending a trade show to see what’s new or get inspiration has become an anachronism. “Years ago, if you wanted to remodel your home, you had to attend the home show to get ideas,” Rob Taylor, executive director of the Lebanon Area Chamber of Commerce, told Lippman. “The internet changed that dramatically.”
Demographics — specifically the region’s rapidly growing population of senior citizens, the so-called “silver tsunami” — also surely played a role in bringing the HomeLife Expo to an end. Generally speaking, young homeowners and growing families have a greater need for the kinds of products and services that had been offered at the expo: They’re renovating the house they just bought or adding a room for their new baby, for example. Older residents, on the other hand, already have all the rooms, windows, doors and sinks they need.
The signs of decline have been evident for several years. The expo had been a collaborative effort between the Lebanon and Hanover chambers of commerce, but the Hanover chamber pulled out after the 2016 show. Organizers put attendance for the 2014 and 2015 shows at about 8,000 each year, but Taylor said those numbers had since fallen. Efforts to boost interest and attendance — a more open floor layout, a “how-to theater,” an expanded food marketplace, a bouncy castle for the kids, beer and wine tasting for the adults — were appreciated but insufficient to save the show. Rising costs — Taylor said the 2018 expo cost $30,000 to organize and produce — were probably the last straw.
Taylor said the chamber would continue to pivot away from event planning — it also discontinued the popular end-of-summer Wings and Wheels event last year — and instead focus more on service and education. Its new Upper Valley Institute, for example, which was inspired by a survey of the region’s major employers, is designed as a series of quarterly presentations that address important concerns, such as wellness in the workplace.
That makes sense and sounds useful. But it doesn’t help those for whom the HomeLife Expo was as sure a sign of spring as that first skinny robin on a patch of brownish grass. Here’s an alternative: The Flavors of the Valley food-tasting expo, set for April 7 at Hartford High School. Organized by Vital Communities and now in its 18th year, Flavors of the Valley features a cornucopia of local foods — produce, breads, cheeses, jams, sweet treats, soups and juices, maple products, ice cream and gelato — from almost 50 different local farms and other vendors. (Check the Vital Communities website, vitalcommunities.org, for ticket prices and more information.)
Like the HomeLife Expo, Flavors of the Valley offers folks a chance to emerge from their winter hibernation to see old friends and make new ones. It also plays to one of the Upper Valley’s real strengths — a growing interest in local foods — and therefore seems well-positioned to pick up the baton as the region’s signature spring event. We’ll miss the HomeLife Expo, of course, and the optimism it represented. But all good things eventually come to an end.