The 70th annual Strongsville Homecoming Festival is kicking off on Wednesday, July 18 at 3pm. The parade will step off from the corner of Progress Parkway and Pearl Road at 6:30pm and will march into the Commons.
From Wednesday until Saturday, July 21, visitors can expect to see the Commons at the corner of routes 42 and 82 filled with games, carnival rides, food trucks, various booths, live entertainment and lots and lots of people. Tom Burichin, the homecoming committee chairman at the Strongsville Chamber of Commerce, said, “We’ll probably see about 50,000 (people) over the four days. It’s hard to keep track because we don’t charge admission, but there could be as many as 10,000 people at one time.”
The annual festival has been one of the city’s biggest events, and has steadily been growing bigger throughout the years. Because of the magnitude of the event and the number of activities taking place on each of the four days, Burichin explained that pulling off the festival requires a lot of planning beforehand.
“We usually start getting together again in August and talk about what to do for next July,” he said. “But come January 1, that’s when we really get geared up and ready to go.”
According to Burichin, countless volunteers help make the event a success. Some of them spend their vacation days sitting on the Commons all day in heat, selling food or ride tickets, which cost $17 for an all-day pass.
With the enormous amount of work that has gone into planning the event, organizers are hopeful that this year’s Strongsville Homecoming Festival will be as big a hit as it has been in previous years.
Aside from the food, rides, booths and entertainment, visitors can also expect to take part in a huge 50/50 raffle, a 5K run sponsored by the Cleveland Clinic on Saturday morning, and about 100 floats in the parade on Wednesday.
For more information about the event, please visit strongsvillechamber.com.
