- By George Spelvin
- Around Town
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Lansing Harbor Festival is celebrating its fifth anniversary this year. On August 13th the festival will take over Myers Park for a day of music, food, vendors, games, and fun. This year, weather permitting, you'll have a chance to literally get a birds-eye view of the festival from the REMAX hot air balloon. The seven-story tall balloon will be tethered at Myers Point. If there is no wind tethered rides will be offered for $15 with the procedes being donated to the Lansing Community Council."The view is going to be amazing," says Festival Chair Karen Veaner. "I am really hoping that this will be possible. We are grateful for the REMAX office for bringing this to us. Amanda Ryen-Yowhan is on the Community Council, and she's done a great job of bringing this to the festival."
  5K Run Baker Cup winner Dave Hatfield with Lansing Harbor Festival Chair Karen Veaner MC Dave Vieser   The Burns Sisters This year's festival is dedicated to Barb White   | ||
The festival is hosted by the all-volunteer Lansing Community Council. A core of about a dozen Council members organize the festival under Veaner's leadership each year.
"There is a lot of planning that goes into an event of this size," she says. "We want to make sure that everyone is safe, that everyone is comfortable, and has a great time. And we have to pay for it, so there is fundraising, promotion, and the logistics of getting everybody where they need to be at the right time, and coordinating with the community."
For the fifth year running WHCU 870's Dave Vieser will be Master of Ceremonies, announcing festival events and DJing between bands. Music this year starts at 11am with Lansing's own Finding Tomorrow, a pop/rock band featuring recent Lansing High School graduates. At 1pm The Burns Sisters bring their folk/rock/country harmonies to the bandstand. The Po' Boys Brass Band starts at 4pm, playing a New Orleans-style brass/funk/rock blend. And new to Harbor Festival this year, the Buffalo-based Canal Street String Band will finish out the evening starting at 6pm with fiddle tunes, sea shanties, cowboy songs, canal ditties, mountain music, western swing, and original songs. The band features banjo, fiddle, twin mandolins, dobro, string bass, guitar, octave mandolin and three-part harmonies.
T-shirt art this year was created by Julie Manners, a Lansing artist whose company Graphic Ideas provides publications, print material and graphic elements for businesses and educational institutions.
The Baker Cup Chicken Barbecue Sauce Contest has been a staple of the festival since its first year. The contest honors the late Lansing resident Bob Baker, who developed the popular Cornell Sauce and over 50 ways of cooking chicken during his career. Dave Hatfield is the chef to beat. He has won the contest for the past two years running.
Activities in the Kids pavilion will run all day with contests and activities including the annual frozen T-shirt contest, things to build from Lowe's and plenty of projects and games. A raptor display is new this year. Kids will also be asked to draw a fish this year. One of the fish drawings will be chosen to be included in next year's festival T-shirt design.
One of the popular features each year is 'vendor row'. This includes a tent city of vendors including a variety of crafts and local businesses and not-for-profits. As in past year food vendors are restricted to one vendor for each kind of cuisine. This provides a variety of choices that is fun to sample throughout the day. Veaner says some old and some new vendors are lined up. This year will be different for vendors behind the scenes.
"It's a bittersweet celebration for the Community Council this year. We lost one of our members, Barb White, this past Spring," Veaner says. She has been instrumental in making Harbor Festival what it is. She worked tirelessly organizing the vendors. People who knew her know that she overcame a lot of physical challenges, and yet she was always in the trenches working for this community. She is a great loss to the community, so we have dedicated this year's festival to her to honor her memory."
Veaner is hoping the weather will cooperate. While it has worked out well for the past three years, a freak storm threatened the festival in its first year, blowing down power lines, limbs in the park, and damaging the huge tent that centers 'vendor row'.
"We had a baptism by fire our first year," she says. "I'm almost afraid to say this, but we had the worst weather that can possibly happen. We paid it forward. The first year we didn't have exactly the festival that we planned, but it was amazing. It was wonderful the way the community came together and so many people showed up. I know the people of our community, and whatever happens we're going to have a great time together."
The Lansing High School cheerleaders and football team will be helping this year, along with the Lansing United Methodist Church and All Saints Catholic Church's Guatemala Mission group. In return the Community Council will make a donation. With recent severe state aid cuts to the school district budget teams are forced to raise money to continue their programs. For the football team this means items like lights for night games, among others. For the cheerleaders it means their team's survival, including coaching and equipment.
"Our fireworks celebration ran smoothly in large part because of the work the cheerleaders did greeting everyone at the park," Veaner says. "The football team set up the parking and helped people park. They worked hard and showed a lot of enthusiasm for their community, and they'll be doing the same thing for the Lansing Harbor Festival. It's wonderful to see these young people not only work hard at what they love, but also work hard to financially support what they love. We're a lucky community to have young people like that."
Like a successful sitcom, the festival has spawned a few spin-offs. Two years ago the Community Council paid for live bands at the Lansing Lions 4th Of July Barbecue, and this year held its own fireworks event.
"What's really exciting is that Harbor festival is growing new events like the Lansing fireworks," Veaner says. "A lot of people asked for fireworks at Harbor Festival. When we sat down to talk about it we felt that adding it on to an already long day would be too much. Then we felt that having another day to spend together would be great, so we decided to have a separate event. I think it has also brought visibility to our community and made other projects more feasible. the playground project was amazing. Ed LaVigne and Mickey Grimm organized that and made it happen in a very short amount of time. What I've learned is that if you can dream it in Lansing, you can do it."
Lansing Harbor Festival is at Myers Park on Saturday, August 13th. More information can be found on their Web site.
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