NILES — Downtown Niles bustled with life throughout the weekend as people toured the streets for the 14th annual Hunter Ice Festival. While the more than 80 intricately carved sculptures were the main display, local businesses also enjoyed the spotlight as customer traffic increased over the three-day festival.     

On Saturday morning, business owner Lisa Miller waited behind the counter of Forever Clean Soap Works for people to swarm her shelves containing homemade soap products.

Miller has been part of the festival for the past three years and said with the exception of Small Business Saturday, the Hunter Ice Festival usually has the highest customer traffic that she sees all year.

“I don’t quite how many customers, but I have taken pictures where you can see that not another person would fit in here,” Miller said. “Especially during the chili cook-off, it is totally packed.”

Throughout the three-day festival, she said she meets customers from all over Michiana and gets the chance to showcase what her business does.

“I get so many new customers and I keep a lot of customers,” Miller said. “It brings in people from out of town that didn’t know I was here and people from in town that didn’t know I was here. It is the best thing that Niles has going on.”

For the Hunter Ice Festival, she offered a sale on her homemade charcoal soaps, which specially for the festival cost $5.99.

Other business owners also dealt with crowds of customers Saturday. At Paris Soda Co., business owner Jim Morris was busy serving a full house during the lunch rush.

“This has been our busiest day in six months,” Morris said.

The occasion also marked a mile-stone for Morris, who celebrated one year of business at the location.

Mother and daughter Ruth and Marjorie Fink, of Niles, visited the restaurant to grab a bite to eat before taking a tour of the downtown festival.

Having lived in Niles for 25 years, Marjorie said she has seen downtown Niles transform over the years.

“There have definitely been some big changes,” Fink said. “It is a lot more touristy, but I think it is a good thing.”

Both said they appreciate that the downtown now offers more things to do. Some of the downtown’s newest features debuted Saturday. Three new businesses, The Lovely Nest, On Base Productions and Ultra Camp offered sneak peeks of their businesses during the festival.

For many families, the festival is a tradition that brings them to the downtown year after year. Sharen and Bruce Cooper, of Dowagiac, have been attending the ice festival since it began 14 years ago. On Saturday, they snapped pictures of the sculptures, starting with a serpent and rendering of a knight in Riverfront Park.

“We always take lots of pictures,” Sharen said. “Then we look at them in the summer.”

Each year, the couple said they never cease to be amazed by the sculptures they find.

Just down the block, Bill Molen and his daughter, Stephanie Fisher, posed for a photo in front of a Darth Vader sculpted from ice.  The family visit the festival every year, and this year, they brought their relatives from Tennessee to check out the festival.

“It’s wintertime. It’s cold. You got to get outside and do something fun,” Molen said.