'New with the old:' Greensburg Community Days returns with new format

The unofficial kickoff of the summer season in Greensburg is back on schedule.

Greensburg Community Days, a popular gathering over Memorial Day weekend since the 1990s, will be returning this year for the first time since before the start of the pandemic.

The event will take on a new form managed by three organizations — Greensburg Recreation, Greensburg Volunteer Fire Department and Downtown Greensburg Project — and will run Thursday through Saturday, May 23-25.

Each day’s events will be held at a different location and be primarily managed by one of the three organizations.

While some previous aspects of the event, such as the outdoor carnival rides, won’t be returning with the new format, Chief Tom Bell of the Greensburg Volunteer Fire Department is optimistic visitors will fall in love with the refreshed version of the celebration.

“It has a little bit of both,” he said. “We have some new kind of things, and we have some of the existing things that went on. … It will be kind of like the new with the old.”

Thursday will feature the Greensburg Night Market on Pennsylvania Avenue downtown, with craft and food vendors and entertainment.

Friday’s events will take place at the Kirk S. Nevin Arena and offer a kids’ night with face painting, snacks, character visits, carnival games and inflatable houses.

Saturday will cap off the event with the fire department’s “Party in the Park” at Lynch Field with a car show, “Battle of the Barrel” challenge for firefighters, vendor show, live music and fireworks to end the night.

Path to reviving an event

Community Days has been absent in its original form since the beginning of the pandemic, Bell said. Restoration work at Lynch Field also kept it from returning.

The fire department started holding its own summer celebration, the “Party in the Parking Lot,” in 2022, and moved it over to Greensburg’s St. Clair Park as a “Party in the Park” last year.

This year, the three organizations joined together after the city decided not to host the event in its previous form, Bell said.

“Last year, the Party in the Park lined up with the night market,” said Jessica Hickey, owner of Downtown Greensburg Project. “Tom (Bell) and I just started chitchatting, and we kind of knew Community Days wasn’t coming back in the same format it previously was. We thought, ‘Let’s still do a Community Days but make it a little bit different.’”

The Night Market takes place on an annual basis, moving indoors to Live Casino Pittsburgh in Hempfield for the winter. Three-quarters of the market is food-based, Hickey said, while the other quarter is handmade items and crafts.

The May rendition of the event during Community Days will have a few more interactive activities for kids, she said.

“So many of our vendors for the Night Market are from Greensburg. It’s really supporting a lot of small businesses,” she said. “It’s exciting to start partnering up with larger organizations to do things.”

Interest in the event already is building, Bell said. Many vendors have reached out.

“We have just been bombarded … with vendors and bands and people asking when, why and how,” he said. “We did not think it would happen this quick. We’re less than 48 hours out from announcing this, and it’s already starting to flourish pretty good.”