After five years of promoting local tourism, organizing festivals, and rallying support for local businesses, Viva Fall River has to be put “on pause.”

Executive Director Patti Rego, who led the grant-funded group for about five years and had been involved since 2019, said in an interview Friday that .the state funding that supported Viva Fall River since its inception has run dry. Its visitors center selling Fall River-themed merch will close on Sept. 30, and Rego will step down as the group’s head at the end of October.

And without her, Viva Fall River will go dormant.

Though the state grant was not the only funding source, “Unfortunately a lot of the funding that really fueled us in the beginning started to dwindle,” Rego said.

Read more at heraldnews.com.