Well, it was another great weekend in Jamestown.
The Yassou Festival was great as usual with great food, fun and dancing. The Farmer's Market continues to improve and be even more successful. We invite everyone to visit the Farmer's Market every Friday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Univera has stepped forward to be a great sponsor for this event. For those that are concerned about parking, we have spaces reserved on Third Street in front of the Renaissance Center. There is also a section of the parking lot, behind the Renaissance Center, reserved for Farmer's Market visitors only. All a person needs to do is drive down Foundry Alley and you will run right into the reserved parking lot.
Now we did tell you all that we would report on the "Street Jam" basketball event as soon as we have the results. This last week we held our monthly economic development and business meeting. Vicky Bardo, Street Jam tournament director, was in attendance and gave a great report on the Street Jam Tournament. She reported there were 275 teams. This is up 50 teams from last year and represents a 20 percent increase. There were approximately 1,100 players who played on 22 courts with 508 games played. It required more than 100 volunteers to host this event. These are great figures.
I guess the other things I would like to mention are the facts The Resource Center purchased over 90 percent of goods and products used during the tournament locally. Along with this, the money raised and used is also spent locally - not removed from our own area. Ron Hasson is the medical coordinator for this event. Hasson reported this year's tournament was free of any major medical incidents - another great thing. We certainly want to thank Ms. Bardo, The Resource Center, the TRC Foundation, the volunteers and the city for another great signature event for Jamestown.
We would also like to give you an update on Fireball Run. Part of the promotion of this event is the production of a short video, three minutes, give or take, for all the host communities. This video involves the mayor and a description of the community taking part that fits with the objectives of the Fireball Run. It is produced for Universal Studios and will be used in the promotion of the community as well as the event. We completed the filming of this video Thursday morning. We wanted to pick a time to shoot the video when the weather was good - we had to wait until Wednesday afternoon to dodge many of the rain and thunders showers that were in the area.
We completed the shooting of this video on Thursday morning. Mayor Sam Teresi worked with Ed Tomassini to complete this video. We studied many other videos produced and feel we came up with an extra special video. For those of you who wondered what we were doing at Tracy Plaza on Wednesday afternoon, it was our way of concluding the video which involved all members of our community, in all kinds of work. Everyone gathered at Tracy Plaza at 3:30 p.m. and put on an amazing performance of our own. It was, in reality, a morale booster for those attending. It simply made everyone feel good.
As soon as this video is available I will let you all know. It will be viewed on the Fireball Run's website.