It's hard to believe that the Houston International Festival was once just a street fair in front of Jones Hall and the Alley Theatre, but that's but one wrinkle in a fascinating history that stretches back to 1971. iFest has been all over the city, from Main Street downtown to Reliant Park, but officials are hoping this year it will enter a new era at the freshly renovated Sam Houston Park, one a little less tumultuous than in recent years.

iFest is now one of Houston's oldest citywide public celebrations, and said to be its original arts-oriented festival. It is definitely one of its most unique: each year it highlights a "spotlight country" (this year is Australia), and orients its food, music and other cultural programming toward that nation as much as possible, as it does with the curriculum guide it produces and distributes to schoolchildren across the Houston area.

But iFest has had a run of bad luck lately. Rain has stalked the festival for the past few years, but never worse than last year, when a downpour forced the cancellation of almost an entire day's worth of programming, including headliner Los Lobos. On top of that, construction around Sam Houston Park -- especially the natural amphitheater that normally houses the main stage -- led to stages being moved around the area around City Hall that hosts the festival, and made getting around it somewhat difficult at times. (Note: the Houston Press is a sponsor of iFest this year.)

But even more significantly, last summer the Houston Festival Foundation, the nonprofit that produces iFest, decided to stop producing the city's annual Thanksgiving Day parade because the holiday event had been sinking it in debt to the tune of some $200,000 or $300,000 per year for the last two or three. The City of Houston itself eventually decided to shoulder the cost of the parade, but according to a September 30 article in the Houston Chronicle, iFest also asked the city to temporarily pay some of the cleaning expenses incurred at last year's event (which it did, and iFest repaid), and had to set up a payment plan before City Hall would agree to renew its special-events permit for 2014.

But a new year brings a clean slate, and iFest's Kim Stoilis, Executive Director of the Houston Festival Foundation, says the foundation has changed offices to space that was donated to them and "realistically" addressed its budget, even managing to build in a "rain day." But it was a serious situation: Stoilis, who has been with the foundation since 2011, reckons that producing the parade one more year could well have spelled the end of iFest.

"That's just a harsh reality," she says. "[The parade is] a great event, and we're so pleased that the city was able to produce it, but as a nonprofit, what business is it of ours producing free events that we can't afford?"

Story continues on the next page.