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Rural county will miss $500,000 festival haul

Sunday, June 15, 2003

By Tom Gibb, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

It's a supersize Christian music festival -- four days, annual magnet to 60,000-plus people, the largest event of its kind in the country, organizers say.

But two weeks before promoters were ready to strike up the first of 40-or-so bands, they've figured they'd better move the whole thing -- lock, stock and loudspeakers -- from its rural eastern Huntingdon County home 90 miles east to Hershey.

That's adios until next year to an event that feeds the local economy as much as $500,000.

Agape Farm, 315 acres of Huntingdon County that's been home to the Creation festival for most of its quarter-century run, is just too soggy and wouldn't dry out in time for the June 25 start of the festivities, organizers decided last week. The county, meteorologists say, got 7.3 inches of rain in the past month, more than double what it would normally see.

"A lot of farmers say their seeds are rotting in the ground," said Susan Harry, co-owner of the Orbisonia True-Value Hardware, four miles away on Route 522.

"It's just rain every day," said retiree Barry Bard, whose home and one-acre garden are a mile from Agape. "I usually get my planting done in the middle of May. This year, I just got it done yesterday. The ground around here is just too wet."

Agreed, said organizers of Creation 2003. In a statement on the event's Web site, www.gospelcom.net/creation, Creation Executive Producer Tim Landis deemed his group disappointed and said they'd "miss the scenic beauty of the Agape Farm." But local farmers, he said, "have not even planted their corn for fear of getting their tractors stuck."

Creation 2003 is billed as a "Christian music, teaching and camping festival," highlighted by high-profile Christian rock groups that give the event a Woodstock-gone-to-church-camp aura. It's an annual rite for crowds to stream in, some camping out, others booking rooms anywhere within a 35-mile radius.

"They come through and buy camping stuff -- propane tanks, lawn chairs if they forgot them, coolers," said Harry at the Orbisonia hardware.

This year's Creation runs June 25-28, a Wednesday through Saturday. And with two weeks' notice, and the Creation crew having no other likely venues where it could set up, the Hersheypark Sports and Entertainment Complex booked them.

It wasn't the first time Creation organizers looked there for help.

After weather forced outright cancellation of the event in 1995, organizers turned to Hersheypark with just a week's notice to keep Creation '96 from going down as a rainout.

Hersheypark is offering campgrounds, stages, mammoth video screens and parking lots, although Landis suggested that those within moderate driving distance commute daily, to take the load off the park campgrounds.

Some are.

At the Huntingdon-area apartment she rents to tourists, Beth Morningstar has a couple coming on a honeymoon to Creation. They opted to keep their Huntingdon County reservations and commute daily to Hershey.

Call her the fortunate one.

The 48-room Huntingdon Motor Inn and 76-room Days Inn were set to hang the no-vacancy sign for Creation.

"We were going to be completely full with Creation people," said Shirley Cornett, desk clerk at the Motor Inn. "Now they're all canceling. It's almost devastating."