The past 2 years have brought plenty of change to Bellefonte. Where does it go next?

First Sundays have typically been kind to the Bellefonte Art Museum — so kind in fact that many of the businesses downtown made an event of it late last year. Now, on the first Sunday of every month, people can supplement their cultural enrichment with a coffee or a doughnut somewhere.

For the months of June and July, gallery manager Lori Fisher and executive director Pat House decided to try something unconventional as the museum celebrates its 10th anniversary.

They added interactive exhibits to several of the rooms in the gallery, so that people could make instead of just look at the art, a fun idea that in the early hours of that first Sunday in June seemed like it might have been a bust.

"Pat House and I, were looking at each other like 'uh-oh,' " Fisher said.

Eventually people started trickling through the door. Some didn't trickle back out for another three hours. Fisher believes that a willingness to experiment has been critical to the museum's survival, and that same idea applies to downtown Bellefonte as a whole.

"It has to keep changing. You can't let things get stale," Fisher said.

By all outward appearances, Bellefonte has been taking Fisher's advice to heart. There have been 22 businesses that have opened within the last two years, including a burger restaurant, an old-fashioned candy store and a tattoo parlor. Robbin Degeratu, the administrative director of the Centre County Library and Historical Museum, said that their programming has seen a boost in attendance.

"The streets are busier than they ever have been," Degeratu said.

Melissa Hombosky and her husband own 3twenty9 Design, a graphic and website design company on Lamb Street. She also has a seat on the board of Downtown Bellefonte, Inc., which used to be know respectively as the Keystone Community Development Association and Historic Bellefonte, Inc. before the two organizations were officially rebranded as one entity earlier this month.

One of the organization's upcoming projects, a community dining event called "Bellefonte Under the Lights," will be held in September along the waterfront near the former Gamble Mill. Hombosky is hoping to sell close to 200 tickets to people interested in eating hot food, consuming locally made beverages and admiring the sunset before the bistro lights overhead take over.

"It's going to be so beautiful," Hombosky said.

She thinks that the perception of Bellefonte has changed rapidly over the past year, in part due to events like First Sunday or the yarn bombing that took place a few weeks ago that build momentum among other people with an outside-the-box idea they'd like to try. Hombosky also pointed to nearby attractions like Good Intent Cider and Big Spring Spirits and streets with full storefronts.

"It's all these little things that are adding up to this moment," Hombosky said.

Mark Dello Stritto thinks that change has been bubbling in Bellefonte for longer than two years. He's the owner of advertising and design agency Loaded Creative (his art director, Sean McCauley, was the one who pitched the yarn bombing activity) and sits on the board of Downtown Bellefonte Inc.

Dello Stritto thinks that some of the new people moving into the community are helping to spur new ideas.

"You had a lot of new businesses open up, you had a lot of new people come into town," Dello Stritto said.

Residents aren't just having new ideas, but are taking the initiative to act on them. Dello Stritto pointed to the Bellefonte Women's Club, which will begin screening movies in Talleyrand Park later this summer and again in 2019.

For Bellefonte to continue to grow at the same speed, he thinks that people will have to continue to step up and become involved.

"I would say the big thing that Bellefonte needs is man and woman power," Dello Stritto said.

This story was originally published June 15, 2018 at 4:21 PM with the headline "The past 2 years have brought plenty of change to Bellefonte. Where does it go next?."