It's Here! Founders Festival Takes Over Downtown Farmington

With a forecast calling for sunny skies and high temperatures, it looks to be a perfect weekend for the Downtown Farmington Founders Festival.

Activities from Friday through Sunday will stretch the length of Grand River from Grove Street and the , to the .

Rebranded when the (DDA) took over the event last year, the festival has been a fixture in the community for the past 43 years. Janet Bloom, DDA events coordinator, said this year's festival will have many familiar favorites, plus some new activities.

One of the largest will be "Go Green," an eco-friendly area in on the north side of Grand River, west of Farmington Road. Bloom said the DDA was looking for "something new we could bring that is relevant ... that had a lot of tie-in for where people are in their lives."

More than two dozen booths will include Arts & Scraps, a Detroit nonprofit organization that uses recycled industrial materials for art projects (on-site starting at Friday at 3 p.m.), vendors with organic and recycled products, government groups and commercial vendors.

"It will be a nice introduction," Bloom said. "We'd like to see it as something we maintain for the festival, so long as it proves successful."

There will be more rides for children in the Go Zone play area east of Farmington City Hall, and hours for that area have been expanded to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday. There's also a new Gordon Food Service family stage on the south side of the Downtown Farmington Center lot.

A returning family activity, a movie under the stars, will be held at this year, rather than in the children's area on pavement. "We thought we needed a nice, cool, grassy area for kids to wind down after the day's activities," Bloom said. "We're anxious to see how that will be received by the public."

What won't be happening this year is the Antique Market in . Bloom said not enough vendors signed up for the first-time event, so organizers will try again in 2012.

Since she started working with the festival, Bloom said, "What has been eye-opening is the number of volunteers it takes for this to be successful. Around 300 volunteers are needed to make this work."

Bloom has been impressed by the community support for the Founders Festival; she said a number of volunteers block out time on their calendars every year to help.

"It's such a pleasure to see things come together," she said. "One of the things I love about event planning is to see families come down and know they'll have pictures and memories that will last a lifetime."

, or visit the Downtown Farmington Founders Festival website.