Thousands are expected to pack downtown State College this weekend for the annual Summer’s Best Music Fest and that’s largely thanks to big music acts and a new beverage policy.

Summer’s Best Music Fest includes a lot of new incentives this year. That’s something organizers hope will bring more people downtown.

“Even though this is the 10th year of the festival, this year feels really new to us in a lot of ways,” Shannon Bishop, Festival Chair, said.

Bishop expects to see between 6,000 and 10,000 people in downtown State College this weekend. She credits that to big artist headliners and beer.

“We’ll have a beer pub that’s located on Heister Street and one that’s on Locust. Festival goers will be able to walk the whole stretch of Calder Way between those two pubs and enjoy their beer and some great music, too,” she said.

This is a pilot year for the beer pubs. Bishop said the borough lifted its open container law for the festival, so they’ll see how things go.

“The sponsorship and the sales that we can hopefully get from the beer pubs will help make the festival grow as well,” Bishop said. “It’s a really crucial piece to the financial success of the festival.”

It’s good news for local businesses, too.

“We’re really gearing up to be really busy. During the summer months, our foot traffic drops off with students being less prevalent in our town during the summer,” Elaine Meder-Wilgus, Owner of Webster’s Bookstore & Cafe, said. “We see a little bump and increases when we have conferences and visitors, so weekends like this that bring people from out of town, bring people who live here, are just make or break for us, really. It’s tremendous.”

Gates open at 3:30 p.m. Friday and the first music concerts begin at 4:30 p.m. There are 23 artists scheduled to perform, 10 of which are national level artists. For more information about the festival and to see the bands performing this year, click here.