The popular Taste of Honolulu food festival and fundraiser has been saved, but will have a new name and sponsor.

The three-day event will be dubbed "The Flavors of Honolulu" and will include clothing and craft vendors in addition to the famous food booths.

The festival will take place June 29 and 30, and July 1, on the Honolulu Civic Center grounds.

Easter Seals Hawai'i, which had organized the event for 15 years, announced in December that it could no longer continue.

Another nonprofit, Abilities Unlimited, announced Wednesday that it would pick up the event and expand it.

"It's going to be a festival for families," said the group's chairman, former City Councilman John Henry Felix. "We're going to feature not only fine food by hosting some 25 premier restaurants of Honolulu, but also garments, woodcraft, everything that represents Hawai'i."

Travel agencies will be tapped to help market the event and pre-sell tickets to visitors and local residents, he said.

"We're going to be very, very aggressive and dynamic," Felix said. "It's going to be an extraordinary event."

All money raised by the event will remain in Hawai'i, mostly to provide job training and other services to people with disabilities, he said. The group was formed in 1983.

Easter Seals said in December that the event had grown too large for its staff to manage, and that it would concentrate on smaller fundraisers.

Felix, who has run various businesses in addition to serving as a councilman, said he looked forward to the new challenge.

"If you know me, nothing is too big to handle," he said. "We're going to keep what's best about the program and expand it."

Mayor Mufi Hannemann said he was very pleased that the event had been saved, and joked that he would not charge a fee to sing there.