Aug 3, 2010 By Christine Haines 3 min read

BROWNSVILLE – Activities will fill downtown Brownsville on Saturday, Aug. 7, as organizations in the borough join together to host the Brownsville Community Festival. The day starts with a parade at 10:30 a.m. and concludes with a concert by the local soft rock band Refuge from 2-4 p.m. Brownsville Borough Councilwoman Tracy Sheehan Zivkovich, who is one of the event organizers, said it’s all part of Brownsville’s Homecoming Week that includes Kennywood Day on Thursday and other events.

“There are class reunions and everything going on in the evening, so we wanted to give people something to do during the day,” Zivkovich said.

“It starts up on the North Side on Spring Street and makes its way through town,” said Tracy Sheehan Zivkovich, one of the organizers of the event.

Zivkovich said the parade will include local bands, dance schools, classic and antique cars, the Rotary Club float, emergency vehicles and others.

“We have a lot of great partners. The Rotary Club will have the street lined with flags, like they do for the holidays,” Zivkovich said.

The downtown area from the Flatiron Building to Fiddle’s Diner will be blocked off for the daylong festival. Immediately following the parade, the action moves to the Brownsville Wharf Riverside Park, giving the antique and collectible cars time to get set up in the Market Street parking lot for an afternoon car show.

“We’re having a diving exhibition at the waterfront, then the dance groups will be performing on the stage that will be across Bank Street,” Zivkovich said.

Both Terry Sheehan School of Dance and Dee Dee’s Studio of Dance will be participating, as will the Brownsville High School cheerleaders, Zivkovich said.

“At 1:30 p.m. we’ll have the Ducky race. We’ll drop the rubber ducks off the Inter-County Bridge,” Zivkovich said.

The ducky race is a fundraiser for the Brownsville Area Revitalization Corporation.

“The entire festival is a co-op between the borough and BARC,” Zivkovich said.

Zivkovich said there will be numerous free activities throughout the day, including a climbing wall that will be set up on Brownsville Avenue, a petting zoo and various game booths for the kids. Horse-drawn carriages will provide historic tours of the town for a fee, Zivkovich said, with the 15-pasenger carriages leaving from the area near the Flatiron Building. The tours will take place between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., leaving every half hour or so.

“Come hungry, there’s going to be a lot of great food,” Zivkovich said.

Zivkovich said the community festival grew out of the Blueprints Community Committee, which views festivals as an economic development tool for communities.

Funding for the festival is coming from a grant from the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development.