The Mayfair Business Association continues to plan for the 35th annual Mayfair-Holmesburg Thanksgiving Parade, scheduled for Sunday, Nov. 20, from noon to 3 p.m. The rain date is Dec. 4.
The parade will travel south on Frankford Avenue from Rhawn Street to Knorr Street. It will include string bands, floats and banners.
Football players and cheerleaders for Thanksgiving rivals Father Judge and Abraham Lincoln high schools have also been invited.
The parade lineup will be set once sponsoring organizations order their banners. The business group plans to sponsor a banner that expresses its opposition to a planned methadone clinic at 7900 Frankford Ave.
Bands and other entertainment groups will perform at Cottman Avenue and at Knorr Street.
Also at Cottman Avenue, there will be balloons artists and face painters, along with radio station B101.
The theme will be Bringing Music to Mayfair. The grand marshal will be Ed Kelly, founder of the Pennypack Park Music Festival.
The business association is looking for volunteers to carry banners.
For more information, call 215–333–2712 or visit the Web site at www.thanksgivingparade.org
In other news from the Oct. 20 meeting, held at Firstrust Bank, at 7345 Frankford Ave.:
• Construction of the new Mayfair Memorial Playground will take place on Thursday, Oct. 27, from 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
Volunteers are welcome to report to the site, at Rowland Avenue and Vista Street, on the campus of Abraham Lincoln. Breakfast and lunch will be served. Volunteers are asked to bring a non-perishable food item to be donated to Philabundance and King’s Kitchen, the food cupboard of Holmesburg United Methodist Church.
An estimated 200 people from the community and Giant supermarket are expected to participate.
The playground closed in 2008, after a toddler fell when her foot got stuck on worn matting. The School District of Philadelphia ripped out the equipment.
The Friends of Mayfair Memorial Playground raised money to resurrect the playground, and the project became a reality with the participation of Giant and Kaboom Inc!, a national non-profit organization dedicated to creating playground space.
The Mayfair Civic Association and Mayfair Community Development Corporation are supporting the effort.
“Working as a team, things are starting to happen,” said business association president Mike “Scoats” Scotese.
• The business association voted to send a letter to the Steuben Day Observance Association of Philadelphia and Vicinity Inc., asking it to move the annual German-American Steuben Parade from a Saturday to a Sunday.
Business owners along Frankford Avenue believe that closing the road to motorists on a Saturday hurts sales. This year’s parade was held on Sept. 24, and merchants pointed to low attendance along the route.
If parade organizers do not agree to the request, the business group will ask them to move the parade off the avenue. Members would suggest that the German-Americans hold their celebration at Cannstatter’s.
• State Reps. Kevin Boyle and his brother Brendan Boyle will co-host a youth basketball tournament on Dec. 3–4 at Lincoln.
Fifty middle school-age boys and girls teams have been invited to attend. They will represent public, private and charter schools in the Northeast.
Proceeds from raffles, concessions and T-shirt sales will go to Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5’s survivors’ fund.
Brendan Boyle sponsored the tournament the last two years. About $7,000 was raised for the charity.
Businesses that want to help sponsor the event can call Kevin Boyle’s office at 215–331–2600.
• Business owners told Jennifer Coco, the crime prevention officer in the 15th Police District, about increasing graffiti vandalism at their shops and on billboards.
The group has provided video footage of culprits to Northeast Detectives and hopes that police ask the news media to publicize the pictures.
“For us, it’s a quality-of-life issue,” said Suzann St. Marie.
• The Mayfair Business Association will meet again on Thursday, Nov. 10, at 9:15 a.m., at the John M. Perzel Community Center. ••
Reporter Tom Waring can be reached at 215–354–3034 or twaring@bsmphilly.com
