The Butler Italian Festival won’t be filling up Main Street in Butler the weekend of Aug. 23, but some businesses in downtown Butler are teaming up to give the community a taste of the recently canceled event.

The Taste of Italy Crawl is a new idea by the owners of Totalus, who have reached out to more than two dozen businesses in Butler to ask each to prepare a special dish on Aug. 24, when the Italian festival initially was scheduled to take place.

Gretchen Heavner, co-owner of Totalus, said Tuesday, July 30, the full list of businesses planning to participate in the crawl has not been compiled, because more keep asking to be involved. Heavner said the event will operate like other holiday events Totalus has organized. Totalus staff will give out passports to visitors which list the participating businesses, and each will serve a special food or drink.

Totalus previously hosted crawls for Easter and Halloween, which Heavner said were popular with locals. The Taste of Italy Crawl is turning out to be “a lot bigger” than Totalus’ previous crawls.

“Everyone was really into it. Almost all the businesses on Main Street are in,” Heavner said. “Every restaurant will have some kind of Italian dish, but we're still getting details from a lot of people.”

The Butler Italian Festival’s producer, Rocco Lamanna, pulled the plug on the event in July, after Butler City Council would not allow festival vendors to set up at a time he requested. It was scheduled to take place from Friday, Aug. 23 to Sunday, Aug. 25.

The crawl is tentatively scheduled to take place from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Aug. 24.

Heavner said Totalus may offer some type of reward to those who visit all of the businesses involved in the crawl. She also said the businesses were happy to get involved with the new event, in hopes the crawl will drive interest to the downtown businesses.

“I think people are really going to miss the Italian fest. We were really sad when we heard it was canceled,” Heavner said. “We think it's going to bring a lot of people in to the businesses and bring some people in who might not go otherwise.”

The passports from Totalus are free, but Heavner said participants in the crawl will purchase items individually from each business. For more information on the developing event, visit its Facebook event page.