Post-pandemic, Arcola keeps Fourth of July festival at Green Mill Village
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By Jacob Hamm
ARCOLA— Green Mill Village was full of vendors, activities, and area residents for Arcola’s July 4th festival Sunday evening.
The festival kicked off at 5 p.m. and lasted until a fireworks ceremony once it was dark. The event featured inflatables for children, a machine that created foam to play in, approximately six food trucks, and a raffle for a golf cart courtesy of a local church.
Cassie Yoder, of Decatur-based marketing firm Cass Concepts, helped organize the event. While Arcola has always had a fireworks celebration, the city needed more space to host the event due to the population growth in the community. During the pandemic, the city had the idea of hosting a drive-in fireworks celebration to gather the community but still follow social distancing requirements. That moved the event to Green Mill Village, where residents parked their cars along nearby streets and sat outside with lawn chairs while enjoying the festivities.
“The idea post-COVID was that Green Mill Village has this space. Why not do something that was still safe, that was a drive-in theme, so that people still felt safe during that time frame, but at the same time, they had space, and so from that point on, Green Mill Village has hosted it,” Yoder said.
She also said that the city and organizers wanted to continue the tradition of hosting the event on Sunday evenings so more community residents could attend. She also said that hosting it near the Carriage Crossing Senior Center and near the Green Mill Village hotel would draw in other audiences, such as tourists visiting the area, senior citizens, and others from nearby communities.