Brian Hagberg
YOUNGSVILLE, Pa. – More than 100 attendees got a chance to find out what Youngsville has to offer during a Community Expo at the Youngsville Fire Hall on Friday.
Youngsville Heart and Soul, along with Youngsville Borough and the Rouse Children’s Center hosted the expo, which was the brainchild of Borough Manager Wendy Wilcox, Heart and Soul Project Coordinator Barb Young, and Penny Sampson, Director of the Rouse Children’s Center.
“We invited our area organizations and businesses to have a table and market to the people what they want to about their businesses, just so people know what we have down here,” Wilcox said.
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Organizers weren’t sure how people would respond to the first-of-its-kind event, but the turnout, both from vendors and attendees, was better than they anticipated.
“We really had no idea what we were going to get when we first started this event,” Young said. “There’s never been an event like this here in Youngsville. This is a totally free event where we just wanted to bring people in and make them aware of what’s available to them in the community and give the businesses and organizations an opportunity to showcase what all is around in the small area. So we were hoping that we would get between 50 and 100. I think we’ve got a really good turnout tonight.”
The event itself grew beyond expectations.
“Actually when we first started talking about this event, it was just going to be a small, small little thing,” Wilcox said. “And the more we got out there and start talking about it, the more people wanted to be involved in it. And it just grew and grew and grew. So yeah, we’re really excited that businesses wanted to do this and it gave them the opportunity to you know, again, showcase what the organizations and businesses do.”
“And we received already good feedback from those who’ve been here to partake and just see everything,” Young added. “Some people commented how much they love it. And they love to have all the businesses in one area and just be able to get to talk to each one.”
In addition to showing off Youngsville businesses and organizations, the Borough and Heart and Soul got a chance to get more responses from the survey it’s conducting to help plan the future of downtown Youngsville. Anyone who wants to fill out the survey may do so here.
“We’ve been working very closely together trying to gather data to see what people would like to see in our downtown,” Wilcox said. “And the Heart and Soul gathers some of that. Heart and Soul goes from the bottom up instead of like a council saying, ‘Okay, this is what we want to see in Youngsville.’ The Heart and Soul goes to the residents. And it goes, ‘What do the residents want to do?’ And then we build from there.”
The survey is only expected to remain open through the end of the week.
