Cooper Young Festival

Cooper Young Festival

A groundbreaking event at the Mid-South Fairgrounds, some highly anticipated chicken sandwiches, and even a band of Iguanas highlight the 22nd annual Cooper-Young Festival taking place Saturday. Organizers said despite the bad economy, the festival must go on. “It’s been weird,” said Cooper-Young Business Association Director Tamara Walker, referring to the process of signing this year’s event sponsors. “I always start in December and I usually have it done in May, and I did this year too.”

Then twists in the economy forced some sponsors to reconsider and others to wait until later than usual to sign on. “So now I’ve done it all twice,” Walker said. The new Chick-fil-A restaurant on Union Avenue opened just in time to provide food for the festival as well as a kick-off party at the restaurant dish last week. Walker is also excited about the involvement of the Salvation Army, which set the groundbreaking for its new Kroc Center, a community recreation center at the Mid-South Fairgrounds, to coincide with the festival.

“They wanted to put their whole groundbreaking around the Cooper-Young Festival, because they are still raising money,” Walker said. “They still have about $2 million left to raise.” Mary Long and Jonathan Postal, who reside in the Cooper-Young neighborhood, created the original art poster. The pair was selected by CYBA board member Stephen Crump. Long and Postal took photographs of various neighborhood scenes and painted them into a 1920s-style wooden window frame, which are common in Cooper-Young homes.