Thousands Gather for Celebrate Mansfield Festival

MANSFIELD – Near­ly 3,000 peo­ple gath­ered on a sun­ny Sun­day after­noon in Storrs Cen­ter to cel­e­brate the best of Mans­field and pro­mote more than 100 local busi­ness­es with art, music, enter­tain­ment, and food.

Vis­i­tors lined up along the side­walk to watch more than 700 peo­ple from com­mu­ni­ty orga­ni­za­tions, local busi­ness­es, and UConn sports teams and clubs parade down Storrs Road and into the center.

Mans­field May­or Paul Shapiro (D) says he thinks the day was “just per­fect” and that down­town Storrs has become a great gath­er­ing place for residents.

“First and fore­most, it’s a place where peo­ple of all ages [can gath­er] – whether they’re UConn stu­dents, younger folks, young chil­dren, and retired peo­ple (seniors) – everybody’s togeth­er here. That’s the way it is today and that’s the way it is pret­ty much any day.”

Shapiro also says the cen­ter is “won­der­ful” and that it is some­thing the town has “nev­er had before.”

This year marks the 14th annu­al Cel­e­brate Mans­field Fes­ti­val, but it is the 4th time the event has tak­en place in Storrs Center’s Bet­sy Pater­son Square.

The fes­ti­val fea­tures a wide vari­ety of activ­i­ty booths host­ed by town busi­ness­es, com­mu­ni­ty orga­ni­za­tions, and UConn sports teams and clubs.

The Mans­field Down­town Part­ner­ship start­ed the cel­e­bra­tion in 2003 in an effort to bring town and uni­ver­si­ty com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers together.

The Part­ner­ship – a non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tion com­prised of the Town of Mans­field, UConn, busi­ness­es, and res­i­dents – focus­es on the devel­op­ment, man­age­ment, and pro­mo­tion of down­town Storrs.

Kath­leen Pater­son, who man­ages the Partnership’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions and spe­cial projects, says hav­ing the fes­ti­val in Storrs Cen­ter helps fos­ter a bet­ter a sense of com­mu­ni­ty among oth­er­wise sep­a­rat­ed people.

“When you have a com­mu­ni­ty booth, and you’re here and the preschool’s next door to… the nat­ur­al his­to­ry muse­um, maybe there’s some con­nec­tions that can made made, and peo­ple who maybe wouldn’t come out are going to come out and see friends and stuff.”

A Pitts­burgh, Penn­syl­va­nia native, Pater­son has lived in Mans­field for 14 years and worked with the Down­town Part­ner­ship for 10. She says she likes being near UConn because she gets to be around a lot of peo­ple while still liv­ing in a rur­al area.

Aside from town res­i­dents, many of this year’s 230 fes­ti­val vol­un­teers were also UConn stu­dents, Pater­son says.

Abby Pomeroy, a who rep­re­sents the school’s Pan-Hel­lenic Coun­cil, says she and oth­er coun­cil­women came to sup­port the town.

“I think it’s real­ly impor­tant to give back because they [the Town of Mans­field] do give us a lot in terms of let­ting us be in their town and let­ting us par­tic­i­pate in all their kind of stuff. I think it’s real­ly impor­tant to show them that we appre­ci­ate all that they do.”

The 5th-semes­ter patho­bi­ol­o­gy and vet­eri­nary sci­ence major says stu­dents who come to the event get a “more over­all expe­ri­ence” of what the Mans­field com­mu­ni­ty is.

“There are a lot of real­ly ded­i­cat­ed peo­ple who real­ly want to make their com­mu­ni­ty shine and I think this event real­ly show­cas­es that. There’s a lot of orga­ni­za­tions that I didn’t even know exist­ed as well,” Pomeroy says. “Through the sign-ups I saw a lot of dif­fer­ent orga­ni­za­tions that I didn’t know were here. So, it’s also a great way to kind of fig­ure out what orga­ni­za­tions you can get involved in on campus.”

Daniela Don­cel and Jare­liz Diaz con­tributed reporting.