SEARCY — With just a couple of weeks until the ninth annual Get Down Downtown in Searcy, the Main Street Searcy office in the city is filled with banners, yard signs and numerous buckets of rolled up T-shirts.
“There are people you see once a year, and it’s at Get Down Downtown,” said Amy Burton, executive director of Main Street Searcy.
Get Down Downtown will take place along Searcy’s downtown Courthouse Square, between Race and Pleasure streets, Sept. 23-24. The community festival will include live music, food, children’s activities, vendors and more.
“The reason we really started this was there was not a free admission event of this type in the community, and downtown is just a natural fit for something like this,” Burton said.
Main Street Searcy, a nonprofit under Main Street Arkansas, aims to improve and preserve historic downtown Searcy structures.
Though Get Down Downtown is free, it serves as a fundraiser for Main Street Searcy.
The sale of products such as T-shirts, popcorn, soft drinks and bottled water will benefit the organization’s general-operations fund, which aids downtown revitalization projects.
Nashville, Tennessee-based rock band The Nobility will headline the Sunrise Motorsports Stage that Friday, and country music artist Keith Anderson will headline the stage Saturday. Local and regional acts such as Edge Nation, Waterproof Mascara, Tristan McIntosh and others will also perform during the event.
“I had a voicemail yesterday that I listened to — that was just somebody who I don’t even know personally, but she comes to the festival every year — and she saw one of the bands that’s going to be playing this year, and she just called to thank us for doing that,” Burton said. “She loves this artist, and was so excited that we brought them in from Nashville. She’s looking forward to the show. That’s what I love to hear.”
Get Down Downtown typically sees about 25,000 people over the entire festival weekend.
“I think it’s definitely grown,” said Lisa Hoffmann, committee member. “It always seems full and crowded.”
The event will include vendors that specialize in handmade jewelry, caricature art, crafts, along with specialty food vendors and local business vendors. At Spring Park, 113 E. Pleasure Ave., the event will also present a stage with performers from area schools and churchs and a Hopkins Braces Kid Zone, which will feature pony rides, face painting, inflatables and more.
Burton said event attendees enjoy Get Down Downtown’s live music and food, but Burton said her favorite part of each year’s event is witnessing the crowds that come out to the square.
“It makes me so proud to be a part of something like this because you see how many people get behind it and show up and support it,” she said. “I love seeing the people come from year to year. I like the personal aspect of being able to provide something like this for the city.”
Hoffmann said she enjoys the friendships she’s formed with other volunteers at the event.
“I’ve met two of my best friends from years ago volunteering,” Hoffman said. “They happened to be in my area and we just clicked. Who would have thought [that of] a four-hour volunteer shift? We have a great time. We call ourselves the ‘festival family.’”
The deadline for vendor applications for Get Down Downtown is Wednesday, and Burton advises festival goers to wear comfortable shoes, bring lawn chairs or blankets, and park on side streets or at the lots of nearby banks and churches, as there is no parking within the festival venue.
Burton said she hopes Get Down Downtown helps familiarize locals with what downtown Searcy has to offer.
“We have a very pretty downtown. We have a lot of good, viable businesses downtown, a lot of retail, a lot of office space,” she said. “We certainly want people to come in the hopes that maybe they’ll see a business that they didn’t know was here, and they’ll come back and maybe do their Christmas shopping downtown or come back and eat at one of our restaurants.”
Many community members make attending Get Down Downtown a priority year after year, Burton said.
“It’s a wonderful community for two days for Searcy [residents] and whoever else wants to come, and you don’t get to do a lot of fun activities like that for the price of free,” Hoffmann said.
For more information, visit facebook.com/mainstreetsearcy.
Staff writer Syd Hayman can be reached at (501) 244-4307 or shayman@arkansasonline.com.