Street Festival Highlights Entertainment & Community Growth
The 17th Annual Texas Street Festival comes at an opportune time for a community seeing its best retail and residential growth in many years.
The state’s largest Labor Day Weekend festival south of San Antonio will feature a stellar lineup of entertainment artists that is headlined by Los Herederos de Nuevo Leon and will also include carnival rides and a car show. The Saturday Aug. 30 event also represents something of a showcase for a growing Mercedes.
Festival visitors who shop at the Rio Grande Valley Premium Outlets will see an adjacent Shops At Mercedes retail area emerging at the intersection of Expressway 83 and Mile 1 ½ East Road. Add in 15 housing developments and subdivisions currently under construction or being planned and city leaders are rightfully proud to blend in holiday entertainment with pride in their community.
“The festival provides an opportunity to promote Mercedes and highlight all of the new businesses that are developing,” said Hector Rocha Jr., the president of the Mercedes Chamber of Commerce board. “Some people like to take jabs at Mercedes, but we’re seeing growth and there’s much more of it on the way.”
The festival itself is formidable in its own right. It will take place in downtown Mercedes on Texas Avenue. A crowd of over 20,000 festival goers is expected at the Aug. 30th event. Admission to the event is free. Gates will open at 3 p.m. with nonstop entertainment until midnight. The mix of festivities features live music entertainment from David Lee Garza, Jaime De Anda, Ram Herrera, Efrain Tijerina and Chris Marshall. There will be kiddie carnival rides, a Jurassic RGV dinosaur show, and wrestling filling out the bill.
There will be a number of food vendors on hand as well. The event is organized by the Mercedes Chamber of Commerce in conjunction with the city’s local government and police department.
“The event seeks to do two major things,” Rocha said. “There’s the collaboration between the chamber and the city in highlighting downtown Mercedes and working to offer a major entertainment event for free.”
‘Huge Learning Curve’
For Rocha, this is his inaugural Street Festival as the chamber board’s president.
He took the leadership role in January. He was previously a board member, but the volume of work it takes to put on a large one-day festival was an eye-opening experience.
“I had no idea the amount of work that went into it, ”Rocha said. “It has been a huge learning curve. It makes you appreciate all of the work that went into it and the people who came before you in starting this event and making it what it is today.”
The Street Festival also has an educational component. Profits from the event are reinvested back into the community in funding scholarships for graduating seniors from area high schools. It’s a win in every way for a community and its signature holiday event.
“It is undeniable that this is one of the largest Labor Day festivals in Texas and the biggest one south of San Antonio,” Rocha said. “It has become a major event in our region.”
For more information go to the Facebook pages of the Texas Street Festival and the Mercedes Chamber of Commerce. The chamber’s webpage of http://mercedeschamber.com also provides additional information about the festival.
- Ric Cavazos
