The National Cherry Festival will celebrate its centennial anniversary next week – and will mark the end of an era for one local official who’s helped keep it safe for more than a decade.

This year’s festival - set for July 4 -11 – will be the last for Gregg Bird in his role as Grand Traverse County’s emergency management coordinator. In his 13-plus years Bird and representatives of other public safety agencies have quietly and effectively come together to for the safety and security of northwest Michigan’s signature summer event, now coordinating more than a dozen local, state and federal organizations.

“It wasn’t necessarily a collaborative team – all of the agencies kind of did their own thing,” Bird says of his early days assisting with festival security. “One of the things I learned early in my tenure is that there’s strength in collaboration. As the world has evolved and become more hazardous, our risks have increased,” Bird says.

Other local public safety officials also say their procedures and protocols have evolved significantly in recent years.

Captain Adam Gray, head of the Patrol Services Division for the Traverse City Police Department, started working festival security a dozen years ago when the command center was a small, one-person trailer and festival security was mostly provided by city police.

Today’s command center is a highly sophisticated security and surveillance set-up located near the festival’s primary venues, providing round-the-clock security across multiple activity sites. Numerous state and local safety law enforcement and emergency services are involved in security, including the city police and fire departments, the Grand Traverse County Sheriff’s and Emergency Management offices, Michigan State Police, the U.S. Coast Guard stations in Traverse City and Charlevoix and the Coast Guard Auxiliary.

Other partner agencies include the county’s Metro Fire Department and Central Dispatch Center, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, the MMR ambulance service, the fire and rescue squads of Peninsula and Elmwood townships, and the Leelanau Sheriff’s Office.

Gray says part of those security procedures include monitoring safety threats and advisories through the Michigan Intelligence Operations Center (MIOC) associated with the State Police. It’s become part of the safety protocols for all significant events that take place throughout the year.

“We do recognize world-wide events, and things going on throughout the region…. we do this for any special event- it’s very common for us to that,” Gray says. “We want to make sure the public can attend these events with their families, and do it safely.”

Gray also says it’s all hands on deck for city police during festival week.

“Everyone is mandated to work an event,” Gray says. “There’s no vacation time."

Planning for festival security takes place throughout the year. Officials meet shortly after each year’s event to debrief on the week and then start working again late in the year on the upcoming festival.

“We spend years working on each festival,” NCF Executive Director Kat Paye says. Festival officials meet with local public safety officials at least once every three months during the year to discuss security planning at various venues including the parades, the air show, the bayside concerts and more.

“We have (meetings) all the time,” Paye says. “We sit down at a table and we talk about the events.”

Paye says the festival budgets between $150,000 to $200,000 annually for event security, including funds for partner agencies and for a private security company that works the festival beer tent and the concert stage. Alexis Bremer, the festival’s operations coordinator, is the primary liaison for festival security. It’s a position that Paye held previously before taking over the festival’s leadership role almost 10 years ago.

The festival’s security efforts have also garnered national recognition, Paye says, earning multiple awards for the emergency plan of the year from the International Festival & Events Association based in Boise, Idaho.

“That is a lot due to (Bird),” Paye says. “He has done an incredible job.”

Officials say the festival’s security planning also provides other community benefits. Emergency planning and response protocols developed there in part have been utilized to respond to other community incidents, including the multiple stabbing at Walmart last July, and the widespread flooding in the Grand Traverse region in April.

Paye also says the festival’s emergency preparedness allows it to help respond to other community incidents with things like medical supplies, food, bottled water, sleeping cots, safety fencing and more.

“We happen to have a lot of the things they need sometimes,” Paye says. “We love to be able to support the community that supports us.”

At the county level, Bird will be stepping away from his county role on July 12, a day after the festival ends, to further develop a public safety consulting firm he launched almost three years ago. Preparedness 360 Solutions assists local governments, schools and private sector operations develop emergency management plans and procedures. Bird also works with a national organization called the I Love U Guys Foundation that provides emergency training and technical assistance for schools, public safety agencies and others.

Bird says he hopes to remain involved in the festival in some capacity in the future.

“We’ve had an amazing relationship with Kat and Alexis at the National Cherry Festival,” Bird says. “I’m still going to be involved in some way.”

But he’s also looking forward to new challenges in a public safety career that started in 1990 and includes stints as a firefighter, paramedic and fire chief before he entered the 9-1-1 and emergency management fields.

“It’s a good time for a transition,” Bird, 53, says of his career shift. “The last 10 years have been pretty grueling…it’s time.”