Festival planning meeting draws crowd
BROWNSVILLE – The initial organizational meeting this week for the first ever Market Street Arts Festival in Brownsville drew supporters from a variety of community organizations, as well as interested individuals. “I feel very energized by the meeting. We covered a lot of ground,” said Fred Lapisardi, who came up with the idea to capitalize on the people who travel through Brownsville during the National Road Festival.
Lapisardi is trying to put together a three-day festival to coincide with the three-day National Road Festival that stretches for 90 miles along Route 40 through Somerset, Fayette and Washington counties.
“It’s kind of aggressive for a first year to jump into a three-day event, but it can be done,” said Muriel Nuttall, executive director of the Fayette Chamber of Commerce and a Brownsville resident.
Lapisardi said he would like to see events throughout the downtown area, including musicians, theatrical performances and the winners of writing contests reading their work. Lapisardi said he’d like to have enough activity going on to entice people traveling along the National Road Festival route to stop and spend time in Brownsville.
“I go to the places that have a lot of things happening. I want to get off the road, park and participate in the activities,” Lapisardi said. “Brownsville, except for Nemacolin Castle, has pretty much fallen off the map since the wagon train stopped coming here.”
The wagon trains, one coming from the east, the other coming from the west, at one time met on the Inter-County Bridge and exchanged flags. A number of years ago insurance issues put an end to the wagon train traveling as far as Brownsville.
Scott Campbell, president of Brownsville Rotary, said that if the wagon train, or some portion of it, can’t be enticed back to Brownsville, the local festival might want to try attracting vintage or antique cars, showing the progression of the road over the years. He noted that Brownsville actually was the destination for many of the wagon trains.
“If you were a true wagon train in the 18th or 19th century, you wanted to get to Brownsville to the river,” Campbell said.
Resident Connie Gore suggested adding a river element to the festival.
“It would be good to tie some type of water event into the festival. The Port of Pittsburgh has grants available,” Gore said.
Lapisardi noted that Brownsville is where the river meets the road.
“That’s what we have that’s unique,” Lapisardi said.
Nuttall suggested that committees be formed to organize entertainment, the writing contest, grant writing and other aspects of developing the festival. Nuttall said the application deadline for the Fayette County tourism grants is in March.
“This is exactly the type of festival the hotel tax was put in place to support,” Nuttall said.