People attending this year's Palmerton Community Festival will likely notice Sacred Heart Parish has a new stand.

And it has students from Carbon Career and Technical Institute's wood shop class, along with its instructor, to thank for it, according to parish event coordinator Cass Chies.For the past several years, Chies said she had looked into the church purchasing a trailer, which would make setting up the parish stand much easier, but lost out in her quest.She then tried to get a team together to design and build the stand, but that didn't pan out either, said Chies, who added that she's wanted a new booth ever since she became coordinator of this event for the parish."We did make renovations, new roof, paint, new floor to the old one, but it's always a chore to set up the ol' dinosaur," Chies said. "We suffer every year with manpower mainly because each panel is 8 feet by 7 feet high, and very cumbersome to carry and handle."Ironically, the impetus behind a new stand began the night before parish members took down its old festival stand, at which time Chies said she had a dream that a new stand was built by the CCTI carpentry shop.Fortunately for Chies and the rest of the parish, that dream has come true courtesy of CCTI students from carpentry shop teacher Don Kerbaugh's class."The evening we were taking down the booth, I was sharing with the crew my dream," she said. "It just so happened that one of the men who was helping (Kerbaugh) is a teacher at CCTI."Chies said Kerbaugh smiled and told her to contact CCTI Principal Brent Borzak, which she did the next day."I told him of my dream and he asked, when do you need it," she said. "I replied, telling him it's not needed until September. He said he would talk with (Kerbaugh) and I should call back after the holidays."In early February, Chies said she was referred to Kerbaugh. She shared pictures of the old booth, as well as photos and designs of the new booth she had in mind for the parish.The end result is a stand that has been built, painted and set up in the park by Kerbaugh and his students.Chies and the parish are grateful for the new stand."It had to be very portable and easy to assemble," she said. "The result is standing in our park."Foods available at the stand include halushki, hamburger barbecue, hot wings by Blue Mountain, and parfaits from The Ice Cream Lab.