The arrival of the 36th annual Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts will force businesses on Allen Street to deal with an unusual circumstance; the closing of the street.

Allen Street was closed to all traffic last Thursday, due to the amount of arts festival preparation required. The street will remain closed until the conclusion of the festival on Sunday.

As many Allen Street stores tack on extra hours for employees and increase merchandise to prepare for the festival, dozens of volunteers will also arrive. Volunteers have been putting in an average of six to eight hours a day to get Allen Street ready to handle the large crowd arriving this week. Volunteers like Dick Waddington have been setting up numerous booths to sell festival items or for information purposes.

"We will be working hard until Tuesday night," Waddington said.

Waddington said the different types of booths are denoted by the differentiating colors: yellow booths will be information booths, red booths will be for sales and the blue booth will be the embassy booth, which provides services and support for incoming artists.

Just as the volunteers need extra time to prepare for the festival, the Allen Street stores need to prepare for the immense increase in customers.

The stores that are located on the street are facing both negative and positive outcomes from the festival and the closing of the street.

Since the street was closed last week, some businesses are finding that the flow of customers and revenue to their stores has been slow.

Jason Sincavage, assistant manager of Rapid Transit Sports, 115 S. Allen St., said his business is negatively affected before the festival because there is no parking for the customers.

"This is a problem all year, but it's worse during this time," he said.

Lauren Herman, manager of End Result, 109 S. Allen St., said her business remains basically the same during the set-up period, but increases during the festival. Along with other stores, End Result usually sees an increase in income because of the festival. Because of the increase in customers, it is one of the many stores on the street that are forced to utilize extra staff.

Sincavage and other mangers at his store only allow employees one day off during the whole festival -- sales jump 20 to 30 percent on Arts Fest days, mainly from additional sales of Penn State products, he said.

"It's a full-time job and we can't give people two or three days off." said Sincavage. Lauren Strauss, an employee at Panera Bread, 148 S. Allen St., said the café gets "absolutely crazy" during the festival.

Businesses on Allen Street also must prepare the actual store for the flux of visitors and guests that will be browsing in the upcoming days.

"We offer more elaborate merchandise (than usual)," said Herman.