The Ottawa Wine and Food Festival is preparing to move from the city's downtown for the first time in its 31-year history, following a legal dispute with the Shaw Centre.

The festival's producer, Joan Culliton, announced Tuesday that this year's event will take place Nov. 4 to 6 at the 220,000-square-foot EY Centre on Uplands Drive near the Ottawa International Airport.

"The EY (Centre) is the largest amount of space in Ottawa, so it allows us to grow our event," said Culliton.

Legal dispute forced move

Since its launched in 1985, the annual festival of has been held in downtown Ottawa.

For all but three of those years it took place at Shaw Centre, formerly the Ottawa Convention Centre and the Ottawa Congress Centre.

After 30 years in the downtown core, the Ottawa Wine and Food Festival is moving to the EY Centre near the Ottawa International Airport. (Waubgeshig Rice/CBC) The event was temporarily moved to Lansdowne Park during the convention centre's reconstruction from 2008 to 2010.

A legal dispute between festival organizers and management of the Shaw Centre following last year's show forced Culliton to find a new home for the event.

The Shaw Centre claimed the problems — including rowdy festival patrons and contract disagreements — had been simmering for several years, and finally boiled over.

A court date has been set for January 2017.

"We were challenged to think about other locations in Ottawa," said Culliton. "[The EY Centre is] a blank slate and we're able to go in and transform it into something that Ottawa has never seen before."

Among the added attractions now possible thanks to all the extra space, Culliton said, is a 5,500-square-foot cheese vault.

Overnight parking allowed

Culliton said she's not worried about leaving the downtown; her own survey results show 84 per cent of the festival's visitors come from outside the downtown core.

"The EY Centre is only 12 minutes from downtown," said Culliton. "For many people coming form Kanata, Stittsville and Manotick, it's closer."

An added bonus, said Culliton, is the EY Centre's 1,800 parking spots and a taxi stand with space for 175 taxis.

As for concerns over the risk of drinking and driving, Culliton said she's confident festival-goers will make safe transportation arrangements.

"In an age of social responsibility, people going to a wine and food festival either assign a designated driver or they take an alternate form of transportation," said Culliton.