In July 2022, the Barre Heritage Festival and Homecoming Days returned after a two-year hiatus due to Covid-19. “It was huge. It was awesome,” said Tracie Lewis, executive director of the Barre Partnership, which plans the annual Barre City event.
But this year’s festival was put in jeopardy by the July floods, which heavily damaged parts of central Vermont, including Barre.
Business owners in the Granite City were initially torn on whether the event should proceed during its normal time frame of late July. They made one point clear, Lewis said: Even if it couldn’t take place in July, it should not be canceled.
Beginning Wednesday and running through Saturday, this year’s rescheduled festival will take place with many of the familiar events: a mile-long parade, the Rotary breakfast fundraiser for the Aldrich Library, live music, food vendors and Saturday night fireworks.
It will be the largest event the city has held since suffering a major blow from the floods.
“I see it as a celebration of the fact that downtown Barre has survived this and that there is a cause for joy and a path looking forward,” said Bob Nelson, owner of Nelson’s Hardware, a Main Street business.
When Vermont was struck by the historic flooding in July, Lewis had been busy planning the festival for its original late-July dates. In the immediate aftermath, Lewis said, the Barre Partnership focused on flood recovery, working with downtown businesses to reopen and helping to coordinate volunteers.
Eventually, there was discussion about the festival. Lewis met with City Manager Nicholas Storellicastro and other city department heads. The initial thought was that the festival should proceed.
“I remember thinking that it would be really cathartic to have it, and maybe, perhaps, healing in a way,” Storellicastro said.
However, once the extent of the damage in the city was clear, it was decided to postpone the event.
Lewis said moving the festival’s schedule has required some hard work. Many vendors couldn’t make the rescheduled date, so she had to find others to fill in. With heavy damage to the historic Old Labor Hall, an annual event called La Soirée Sucrée, featuring Franco-American food and music, was canceled. But Lewis said her overall goal was to make this week’s event “as close to the original festival that was planned for July” as possible.
Storellicastro admitted that an atmosphere of celebration remains “a difficult line to walk,” because the city’s recovery is incomplete. Landslide threats are still lingering and many people remain displaced from their homes. Despite that, some recognition is deserved, he said.
“I think that, in moments like this, it’s important to acknowledge progress, celebrate progress, celebrate the community, celebrate the great acts and deeds and volunteerism that has happened, celebrate the great job that the staff has done helping put the city back together,” he said.
After a difficult summer, some downtown business owners said they are looking forward to that celebration.
Nelson arrived at his hardware store in downtown Barre on the morning of July 11 to find a basement full of water and about a third of his store’s inventory destroyed. After only one day of cleanup, he opened up the store, asking Ace Hardware to send him extra sump pumps, hoses, dehumidifiers, fans and gloves to meet the needs of the city. Electricity hadn’t yet been fully restored when the store became a hub of flood recovery.
Nelson said he’s still working to understand all the inventory the store lost.
“It’s been a challenge for sure,” he said.
But Nelson also said he always looks forward to the Heritage Festival. He recalled being in high school when the event was the ethnic heritage festival, intended to celebrate the city’s history of immigrants.
Nelson said his family has been in retail for four generations in central Vermont. Most years, he displays some of that history in the windows of his store in honor of the festival. This year the recovery from flood damage prevented that from happening, but he intends to bring it back next year.
“We thoroughly enjoy having all the activity downtown,” Nelson said, adding that the festival is about showing what “Barre can do and what Barre is all about.”
Mark McCarthy is co-owner of Lenny’s Shoe and Apparel, which has two locations in the downtown area — a main store and an outlet. The outlet store had water in its basement that was quickly cleaned out so it could reopen, and McCarthy said the store was lucky that it dodged more serious damage.
He also recalled seeing all the damage to other businesses and homes in the city and doubting how the July festival could proceed. He agreed with the decision to postpone, but was looking forward to using this year’s event as a “showcase.”
McCarthy, speaking on Tuesday morning just before setting up a tent sale that his business will run every day of the festival, said the event is an opportunity to show the state that “we are resilient and we have bounced back and hey, guess what, Barre’s not going down without a fight.”
