Why leave town when the Valley has big happenings?

It might be a good idea to cancel that weekend getaway.

BY RICK ROUAN

Vindicator Staff Writer

Best. Weekend. Ever.

At least that’s how it’s being billed. But, hype aside, this weekend is shaping up to be one of the most action-packed in recent memory as area organizations cram some fun into the post-Fourth of July dog days of summer.

Summer Festival of the Arts. Tour of the Valley. St. Nicholas Greek Summerfest. Forte on the Fifty. Fallen Officers Memorial Run. Smoky Hollow 5K Run. St. Christine Parish Festival. St Luke Parish Festival.

Suffice to say, it might be a good idea to cancel that weekend getaway and stick to the Mahoning Valley, where events are expected to draw thousands of people.

“You’d be hard-pressed to find a weekend across Ohio in any city that will be more filled with activity and entertainment for people in every walk of life,” said Mayor Jay Williams. “This very well may be the best weekend of the summer. This will be hard to top.”

Williams said he expects “tens of thousands” of people to converge on area events, which highlight the diversity of the region.

“In the past, so many times, the competition of events was scheduled so only one thing was going on at a time,” said Phil Moore, executive director of the Youngstown Convention and Visitors Bureau. “In recent years, we’ve tried to encourage organizers to have more things going on at once so we can have greater mass and attract more people to the Valley.”

The visitor’s bureau has been pushing the Tour of the Valley, a sanctioned bicycle race for amateurs and pros that begins today and ends Sunday, the same weekend as several other area events. And it wasn’t an accident.

“When things were being scheduled, we knew right away early on that it was all going to come together. We view that as a good thing,” Moore said, adding that the plethora of events will draw people from both inside and outside the Valley.

“It’s economically good for the area. They have to eat, stay in the hotels, pay for just about everything,” he said. “When they leave, they’re dizzied by all the things we have.”

Piling events in the same weekend makes economic sense for the event planners, too, as they face tighter budgets.

Organizations have banded together to help one another advertise and draw traffic to events, said Lori Factor, assistant director of the performing arts series at Youngstown State University.

“It’s another way of collaborating our resources,” said Factor, the chief organizer for Summer Festival of the Arts.

“We all recognize that having patrons come through and see our respective organizations makes sense.”

The Summer Festival of the Arts, a free event that Factor said typically draws about 13,000 people, features more than 60 jury-selected artists, poetry readings, music and food.

“It’s all for any age,” she said. “I don’t want people to get the impression that it’s children’s programming ... It’s not clowns and musicians and things like that. It’s more music and dance.”

Factor said the festival brings together art from all walks of life throughout the Valley.

“The main purpose in there is to showcase in one place that our area has such a rich cultural heritage,” she said.

For Williams, who has plans to appear at several events, the weekend is a way to help change the perception of Youngstown outside the Valley.

“For those few people who are still holding onto this reputation of Youngstown as it once was, Youngstown is being redefined as we speak,” he said. “We’ve got problems to overcome, but it’s weekends like this where we set aside our differences.”

For details on these Youngstown events and many other activities in the region this weekend, see Go & Do.

• Summer Festival of the Arts, Youngstown State University campus, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday

• Tour of the Valley, Ellsworth Township, 8:30 a.m. Friday; Canfield, 1 p.m. Friday; Columbiana, 8 a.m. Saturday; Youngstown, 8:15 a.m. Sunday

• St. Nicholas Greek Summerfest, 22 N. Walnut St., 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday; 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday

• St. Christine Parish Festival, 3165 S. Schenley Ave., 6 p.m. today, 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Fireworks 10 p.m. Sunday.

• Forté on the Fifty, Stambaugh Stadium, 6:30 p.m. Saturday

• Smoky Hollow 5K Run, Harrison Field on Walnut Street in Smoky Hollow, 9 a.m. Saturday

• Fallen Officers Memorial Run, Covelli Centre, 11:10 a.m. Sunday