Export planning to host annual borough festival in August

Patrick Varine | Tuesday, July 7, 2020 9:23 p.m.

Submitted photo

Children and parents enjoy the day at the Export Ethnic Food & Music Festival on Saturday, Aug. 17, 2019.

Export officials are planning to hold the borough’s annual Ethnic Food and Music Festival on Aug. 15 in hopes that the covid-19 pandemic will subside in time to host the annual event with proper health and safety guidelines in place.

“We can move forward with planning without a lot of financial commitment,” Councilwoman Melanie Litz said Tuesday evening. “We can wait until Aug. 1 to cancel the festival, if that’s what has to happen.”

This would be the fourth year for the festival, which also is taking place just a couple weeks before the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II. Festival organizers are in preliminary talks with the Tri-State Warbird Museum in Batavia, Ohio, to stage a flyover at the festival.

In addition, the borough’s war memorial is slated to be moved closer to the Washington Street corridor where the festival takes place. That project will likely have to wait, Litz said.

“Our new target date for a re-dedication ceremony is Memorial Day 2021,” she said. The original plan was to hold the re-dedication at the festival, but “we don’t want to have a re-dedication for a partially moved monument,” Litz said. Preliminary estimates for the project — which also includes lighting and landscaping in addition to the cost of moving several tons of granite — are around $45,000. The Export Historical Society already has about $30,000 in hand, raised through the borough’s recent veteran banner program, donations and a $10,000 gift from former resident Gary Wuslich.

Wuslich initially approached the borough about relocating the monument when he was in town during 2018.

The former American Legion building, where the monument currently sits, does not see much use and Wuslich said he “felt the monument should be in a more prominent place.”

The area off Washington Avenue is proposed to host several items that recall Export’s history. In addition to the fully restored Turtle Creek Valley Railroad caboose that was dedicated at a previous Ethnic Food and Music Festival, borough officials would also like to build a replica of Export’s former train station, which will house some of the items the Export Historical Society collected over the years.

For the latest on the festival, see ExportPennsylvania.com.