Celebrate La Salle transforms into winter festival with ice rink, activities

Celebrate La Salle has been rebranded and revamped to a winter festival.

Celebrate La Salle was the city’s annual four-day summer festival featuring live music, a carnival and fireworks show that typically took place at the end of June.

“We sort of reenvisioned what a municipal event should look like,” said Brent Bader, the city’s director of public relations and community development.

The festival will take place place from Friday, Nov. 7, to Saturday, Nov. 8, directly following the Run Run Rudolph 5K.

Administrative Assistant Julie Gunia, who was responsible for planning Celebrate La Salle, said the date is fantastic because not a lot is going on in the surrounding communities.

“That opens the door for us to invite everyone from the surrounding communities to come into our downtown and see what we have to offer,” she said.

Every community has something similar to Celebrate La Salle and the carnivals are typically done on adjacent weekends to neighboring towns, Bader said. Pairing it alongside the Celebration of Lights will offer residents and visitors a unique experience.

“After the second year of doing the Run Run Rudolph 5K, … we had a large group of people just hanging out by the buses,” Bader said. “Nothing to do, just talking to each other.”

He said at first officials discussed possibly adding a band for entertainment but ultimately chose to shift gears towards a winter festival. It’s also possible thanks to a $50,000 tourism grant.

The winter festival – tentatively named Frosty on First – will include an ice skating rink (with rental skates available), an inflatable snowman bounce house, an inflatable maze and five fire pits located around the downtown for warmth. The plan is also to have holiday movies on a projector for public viewing.

Santa will arrive downtown with the fireworks during the festival. Harmonix will perform on Friday and a barbershop quartet will perform throughout the downtown on Saturday as well as the Windy City Dueling Pianos.

The city will have 10 food trucks downtown that will offer options distinct from what is already served by downtown restaurants. The city will provide a map to tourists that will have downtown shops and restaurants they can visit while enjoying the festival.

Tentatively, the festival may have s‘mores kits around the fire pits, a bourbon tasting and pictures with reindeer.

“We want to make sure that it’s going to support the downtown more than Celebrate La Salle has, where it feels like we’ve kind of infected downtown for a little bit,” Bader said. “The goal with this is to hopefully generate more traffic in and out of the stores.”

Mayor Jeff Grove said he’s excited to incorporate the Celebration of Lights with this new event as a way to get more people into the city’s downtown.

“It will be a Hallmark weekend for La Salle,” he said. “It’s a great way to kick off the holiday and Christmas events.”

The city is looking for sponsors of the event; similarly to Celebration of Lights. If interested contact Brent Bader at b.bader@lasalle-il.gov or 815-815-223-3755, ext. 5028.