Westlake's Sister City of Tralee Visits to Join Bicentennial, Fourth of July Celebrations

Westlake and Tralee may be sisters, but they’re still getting to know each other. Tralee Mayor Councillor Grace O’Donnell and Development Officer John Griffin are visiting Westlake for the first time this week to help celebrate the Fourth of July and Westlake’s bicentennial.

“This is the first time we’ve been able to send someone out,” O’Donnell said. “This year is so important for Westlake since it’s the bicentennial and we’re delighted to be part of the celebration.”

Westlake Mayor Dennis Clough visited Tralee in 2009, when the two cities first twinned through nonprofit group Sister Cities International.

“This really creates a relationship where we have an opportunity to promote tourism and exchange ideas,” Clough said.

O’Donnell and Griffin will take part in the Fourth of July parade on Monday, which she said should be similar to the St. Patrick’s Day parades in Ireland.

“We have parades in Ireland around the and we would have parades around St. Patrick’s Day which seems very similar to what you’re going to have on the Fourth with all of the community groups,” she said. “It’s exciting to be involved with that and to be here celebrating that.”

But to Westlake’s sister city, a bicentennial is a young birthday to celebrate.

“[Westlake] is very young,” O’Donnell said. “But Westlake and Tralee are similar in many ways like the demographic and the way they’re very community-oriented. The difference would be that we’re much, much older.”

Some of the other differences O’Donnell noticed were the layout of the city and government structure, along with some other little things. While travelling around, O’Donnell started a list of ideas to bring back home to Tralee, including a mulch project and community-sponsored flower boxes.

“We don’t do a lot of that in Ireland and we cold do a lot more it. It’s so beautiful,” she said. “It’s a great idea.”

O’Donnell was impressed by the quality of buildings in Westlake after touring the , and on Friday.

“It’s lovely to see the new buildings,” she said. “A lot of our buildings in Tralee are quite old.”

While there’s plenty of sightseeing on their agenda, like a trip to the Irish cultural garden, a trip on the Nautica Queen and fireworks displays, O’Donnell and Griffin are also in Ohio on business.

“In Tralee, we are very hard done by for industry; there’s very little industry, and something like that, we would love," O'Donnell said. "We have some companies but times are tough and in Ireland, so we need to focus a little bit more and try to gain industry and try to get commercial enterprises into the town. I think they do a very good job of that from what I’ve seen around and talking to councilors, so we’ve learned a lot there.”

Clough, city council members and department directors are discussing development strategies and sharing best practices, particularly on how to develop and attract business.

“We’re showing her what we’ve done here in Westlake,” Clough said. “We had the opportunity to grow basically from a green field. They’ve been around longer, but we’ve done some thing right that we can share. What they’re seeing is how we have developed to sustain our community and I think that’s something she wants to try to do over there. They have a lot of the same demographic. They’re about 20,000 people, and 20 years ago, we were about 20,000 people.”

O’Donnell was particularly impressed with and its development over the years.

“It’s way ahead of anything we have in Ireland,” she said. “It’s just wonderful.”

During the trip, the relationship between the sister cities has a chance to keep growing. O’Donnell and Clough are talking about expanding the students’ art exchange, which began this year. O’Donnell said she would love to be able to select a few student artists and send them over to Westlake, and vice-versa in the future.

“I think it’s going to work out really well,” O’Donnell said. “Particularly with twinning cities, the Irish-American ones work really well because the Americans have a huge interest in genealogy so they’re excited about going to their sister city. And it’s the same with the Irish because they’re just curious by nature so they just want to come out and see what’s going on over here.”

O’Donnell said that County Kerry is hosting a Kerry Family reunion in 2013, and is hoping to get all of the Kerry families to Tralee for the big celebration, including anyone in Westlake.

You can find O’Donnell and Griffin at the Fourth of July celebrations during the Sunday night, or at , learning more about the city and joining the celebration of Westlake’s bicentennial.