Central PA 4th Fest will return on Independence Day as the nation celebrates the 250th anniversary of the United States, but this year’s edition will see a few notable changes.
The day will still kick off with the Firecracker 4K. A parade will still march through downtown State College. And fireworks will still light up the night sky from the northeast corner of the Penn State campus.
However, the festival that in the past has taken place on the streets and lots near Medlar Field at Lubrano Park and Beaver Stadium will be a bit different.
Festival activities will be centralized entirely inside Lubrano Park, and instead of the typical early afternoon start time, the festival will begin at 4 p.m.
Admission to the ballpark for the festival will be free, Central PA 4th Fest executive director Celesta Powell said. Once inside, for those who want to reserve seats, organizers are still working to determine whether they will be available for free registration or for a “very small fee,” Powell said. In either case, the cost will not be anywhere near that in the past when the park served as premium seating for the fireworks show.
“In years past, we have utilized the Penn State parking lots as well as Curtin Road to do the [festival], and so this year it’s more of a financial option for us to be inside Lubrano Park,” Powell told StateCollege.com. “We worked really hard to figure out how could we financially put a good show out with the money that we have, with the support that we have. And our best way to do that was to use a smaller footprint and to start later in the day.”
For 25 years, the Centre Region’s annual Fourth of July celebration has been operated by Central PA 4th, an independent, volunteer-run nonprofit organization that pays for everything from facility use to emergency personnel to the fireworks show, which costs about $125,000 on its own. Powell stressed that the 4th Fest is not run by Penn State or local municipalities and does not have a major corporate sponsor. It also did not receive an America 250 PA grant this year.
Instead, it is dependent on donations and volunteers, which, as is the case for many nonprofits, have been more challenging in the years since the COVID-19 pandemic.
“People realign their priorities, and that’s what we have,” Powell said. “Our dollar has dwindled for many reasons…. The reality is it takes money and people to do something like this.”
In addition to reducing the footprint of the festival, organizers also evaluated data and decided on the later start as another way to address funding and personnel constraints.
“The Fourth of July celebration in our community has evolved based on how the community wants it,” Powell said. “We tracked our numbers through the day, and we tracked when people are coming up, and our largest group of people start to arrive about four o’clock. So we were spending a lot of money for events that people were not really attending. And that’s not to say that nobody would, but we’re then paying Penn State for all-day crowd control, EMS services, blocking an entire road for limited attendance.”
So the show will still go on, albeit in a somewhat different format.
Attendees at the festival will have access to ballpark concessions and restrooms. There will be plenty of activities for children in the area of the Spikes’ Kids Zone. Community organizations will be on hand offering activities and Powell anticipates having the traditional free birthday cake. And organizers are still working on other entertainment that will take place leading up to the fireworks.
Of course, attendees aren’t required to go inside Lubrano Park and can simply choose to bring their vehicle to spend the day outside and watch the fireworks at night.
Parking lots closest to the ballpark like Porter North, Jordan East and Stadium West will open at 9 a.m., while others like those in the ag fields will open at about 3 p.m. Fees for parking will remain the same as the last two years (ranging from $10 to $25), with modestly-discounted advance sales and day of purchases available. Advance sales should be available online soon, Powell said.
She noted that parking revenue is critical to keeping 4th Fest going.
“That will help us cover what you see in the sky,” she said.
Fireworks will start at 9:40 p.m. and organizers are once again planning on a 30-minute show. As usual, you won’t need to be inside Lubrano Park to see them, and the choreographed music will be simulcast on 99.5 FM The Bus.
“With limited cloud coverage or the weather being in our favor, you’ll still have the same view you had last year,” Powell said. “Last year was a nice, clear sky, so that was an optimal kind of viewing. It’ll depend on the weather how good the view is, but our show will be the same size as it’s been the last two years.”
The day will kick off with the 22nd annual Firecracker 4K starting at 9 a.m. near Beaver Stadium. Registration is available online now and is $17.76 per person until April 30, when rates will increase.
The Independence Day Parade, meanwhile, will step off at 11 a.m. in downtown State College. According to information provided for a recent State College Borough Council approval of the road closure, the parade will travel east along College Avenue from Burrowes Street to Garner Street, as it has in recent years.
This year’s parade is organized by Nittany American Legion Post 245 and Freedom Rising USA, a Centre County nonprofit with a mission “to celebrate and preserve the rich traditions of American holidays and the values they represent – unity, gratitude, service and freedom,” according to its website.
The Legion post has been organizing the parade for three years, but this is the first year it and the related nonprofit organization are doing so under their own auspices in coordination with 4th Fest, Powell said.
“There is a cost to putting on a parade, and when we looked at what we were going to finance, what kind of volunteer support we had the last couple of years, one of our dedicated board members is with the American Legion, and he said ‘Our group would take it on,’ and we said ‘Sure,’” Powell explained.
To register to participate in the parade and additional details, visit freedomrisingusa.org/#events.
Though the event has evolved and changed, Powell said the people behind 4th Fest continue to look forward to putting on a show for the community.
“These are volunteers in your community doing this,” she said. “They’re not businesses. They’re not people getting paid. They do it because it has value to them.
“Our goal is to continue to put a show on. We had so much money in our budget to do it. The things we have to pay for, some people think we don’t. They might think it’s an unlimited pot of dollars, and it’s not. And this is what we’re working hard to do.”
