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FALL FESTIVAL 2013
Page 20
Park and ride
Local church will offer free parking, shuttle to festival
After nearly 60 years, organization at
the annual Plymouth Fall Festival is
almost a science. There has been, how-
ever, one ongoing glitch that volunteers
from Praise Baptist Church hope to
solve this year.
There will be free parking at the
church located on North Territorial
Road and continuous round-trip free
shuttles into downtown for visitors to the
festival.
According to James Hooper, a mem-
ber of the church, the effort to help alle-
viate some of the traffic and parking
problems during the annual community
event came as a part of the church lead-
ership group.
“The church wanted to be more
involved in the community,” Hooper
said. “We wanted to reach the communi-
ty and we were looking for ways to vol-
unteer. We were talking with Eric (Eric
Joy, Fall Festival chairman) and the idea
of the free shuttles and parking came up.
It just seemed like an ideal solution,”
Hooper said.
The shuttles will run continuously, he
stressed and he expects that the round
tripswill take nomore than 15 or 20min-
utes.
“The church will be open, so in case
of rain or hot sun, nobody will bewaiting
outsideunless they choose to,” he said.
Rather than a large church bus, vol-
unteers from the church will drive two
smaller vans with plenty of room to
accommodate passengers and make
more frequent trips, Hooper said.
“These are experienced drivers who
do volunteer driving for the church,” he
said. From the church parking lot, pas-
sengers will be dropped off at the corner
of Ann Arbor Trail and Forest Street,
where they will also be picked up for a
return trip to their vehicles parked in
the church lot at 45000 North Territorial
Road.
The vans will not leave anyone stand-
ing waiting, Hooper said, and won't need
to wait until they have a full load of pas-
sengers to make the route. “If there are
people at the church or at the Forest
Street stop, the vans will take them
downtown or back to the church,” he
said.
Hooper said the Fall Festival board
members had also authorized signage
for the shuttles this year and there will
be signs and arrows to follow to find the
church.