La Terraza on the Ave to bring Hispanic culture, business to downtown Wenatchee

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Anna Machado-Guerrero, with SanZar Dance Company, performs the Sinaloa dance "Flor de Amapa" while holding a botellon during La Terraza on the Ave in 2025 in downtown Wenatchee.

By noon Saturday, the avenue will begin to smell like grilled meat and sweet dough, citrus and spice, tequila and summer pavement warming in the sun. Music will drift between storefronts. Children will chase soccer balls beneath inflatable arches. Cyclists from Tour de Bloom will blur past in bright ribbons of color. And for one spring day, downtown Wenatchee will become La Terraza on the Ave, a street festival stitched together with food, music and community.

Now in its sixth year, La Terraza returns Saturday to downtown Wenatchee along Wenatchee Avenue between First and Second streets, bringing about 30 vendors, live entertainment, a tequila garden, youth activities and a renewed focus on celebrating Hispanic culture in the valley.

For D'Andre Vasquez, Hispanic business and community relations coordinator at the Wenatchee Valley Chamber of Commerce, this year's festival feels especially alive.

"This is my second year at the chamber and my second year helping coordinate the event," Vasquez said. "Last year, our Hispanic Business Council got together and talked about how we wanted the focus to be a little bit more Hispanic, to be more inclusive of the entire minority business community here."

That conversation reshaped the festival with a logo refresh, updated branding and more intentional outreach to Hispanic-owned businesses and vendors.

The result, Vasquez said, is an event that feels broader, warmer and more reflective of the cultures throughout North Central Washington.

"We wanted to be far more inclusive of not just Mexico, but the entire Hispanic community," he said.

This year's additions include a salsa band traveling from Spokane.

"I'm super pumped," Vasquez said. "A big request that we had was different kinds of music. It's really hard to come by anything that's not traditional Mexican regional or mariachi here. We've got a salsa group coming in from Spokane … to provide just a different layer of Hispanic culture to the event."

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Atzy Martinez, 5, of Wenatchee, has her face painted by Kathy Hirschel of Let's Color Art Studio during La Terraza on the Ave in May 2025 in downtown Wenatchee.

The festival will run from noon to 10 p.m. downtown, where vendors will sell food, retail goods, handmade crafts and nonprofit resources. For many small business owners, Vasquez said, the festival is about visibility as much as celebration.

"The purpose of the event is to provide our small business owners, our minority business owners, an opportunity to have a storefront location for the day," he said. "For us, it's really essential that we keep the event on the avenue and provide that kind of prime real estate location."

Nearby businesses are joining in with special promotions and La Terraza-themed drinks flowing onto sidewalks and patios.

Among the festival's centerpiece attractions will be a tequila garden hosted in collaboration with Columbia Grazing, pairing charcuterie with specialty cocktails. Across the street, families will find a youth activity zone with inflatable games, soccer darts and nonprofit-led activities designed to keep children occupied while parents browse vendor booths and music stages.

"It'll be the place to be," Vasquez said.

This year's festival also coincides with the Tour de Bloom bicycle races, creating an unusual mix of cultures and crowds downtown. Rather than competing for space, organizers have embraced the overlap.

"The only way that any of us have any kind of success is through collaboration," Vasquez said. "I think anyone who maybe primarily came for our audience might experience a bike race for the first time, and vice versa."

And perhaps that is the rhythm of La Terraza: not merely a festival, but an invitation. A street becoming a table. A downtown becoming a plaza. Strangers brushing shoulders beneath paper banners while salsa horns rise into the evening air.

For one Saturday in May, the avenue will not simply host a gathering. It will breathe with it.

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