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Michelle Bogacki, Ridgway Chamber of Commerce's Main Street Manager, hopes to boost the local economy by hosting a "Flavors of Fall" festival in which the community is invited out to celebrate the sights, smells and tastes of the season.

By Dana Baluch
Special to The Ridgway Record

Michelle Bogacki, Ridgway Chamber of Commerce's Main Street Manager, hopes to boost the local economy by hosting a "Flavors of Fall" festival in which the community is invited out to celebrate the sights, smells and tastes of the season.
This event will aim at promoting tourism in Elk County. "Flavors of Fall" will be held on Saturday, Oct. 17, and will have something for everyone. At a time when fall foliage is at its peak, this is a perfect time for this kind of event. It is a festival in which downtown retailers can showcase their items, and also do some promotional marketing for the area. It also aims to promote retail and to boost the economy.
"I opened up the opportunity for vendors, music, arts, crafts and unique retail without competing to to the general retail thats downtown already, as well as the restaurants. I am trying to avoid food vendors to be able to promote the restaurants or the restaurants to be able to highlight their specialties or to do some type of a fall flavor. Working collaboratively with the Chamber of Commerce we decided to do a retail tour with a festival event."
The event will be on a Saturday but she is trying to tie it into other events that are local in order to lure people to spend the weekend in Ridgway.
"Its up to the retailer to do their own advertising and marketing, but hopefully this will generate some foot traffic," Bogacki said. "This will build some economic dollars downtown.
"The Welcome Center has been doing really well. The people are definitely stopping. There are a variety of people. It is actually international as well. We get them from Germany, and have even had some people from Germany stop and are interested in relocating to the U.S., and they are looking at Ridgway. We get a lot of Canadians because of the 219 corridor. So they are stopping because they are recognizing the appearance of our community and the county seat with the courthouse. They stop and they want to know where they can eat and stay. We provide them with opportunities for lodging, elk viewing and the Kinzua Bridge. You could actually spend a whole weekend here and be very entertained with just either events or just that recreational aspect of going for a walk, canoeing and so forth, and taking it easy."
The Main Street Program is a comprehensive, community-based revitalization approach, developed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 1980. Communities across the U.S. apply its four key components with great success. These four components are design, promotion, organization and economic restructuring.