This Week: An Artists' Community at a Shuttered Church?

It is the first full week of August, which as everyone who lives in Bethlehem knows, is Musikfest week.

We’ll be providing daily schedule highlights from the festival in our Today in Bethlehem features through the week.

Here are some other things to help you survive your trips to the festival:

• The Patch Musikfest 2013 Guide

• 5 Tips for Your Musikfest Visit

• How Not to Get Arrested at Musikfest

However, Musikfest is not the only thing happening in Bethlehem this week. Here are some other things to know:

• It will be a busy week for municipal government meetings. The Bethlehem Area School Board’s Finance and Human Resources committees meet beginning at 6 p.m. Monday at the Education Center on Sycamore Street.

• Bethlehem Township Commissioners also meet at 7 p.m. Monday. Find the agenda here.

• Bethlehem City Council meets at a special time Tuesday—5:30 p.m.— at Town Hall, presumably an effort to avoid parking and crowd conflicts with evening Musikfest crowds. The agenda has not yet been made public.

• The Bethlehem Planning Commission meets at 4 p.m. Thursday at Town Hall. The agenda includes a plan to redevelop the shuttered St. Stanislaus Church at 419-429 Hayes St. into an artists’ community. The existing rectory would be demolished and replaced with a four-story, 28-unit apartment building. The church building would be retrofitted for two offices, a community room and an art gallery.

• It’s a music fest of a different sort for Bethlehem Area School District student musicians. Summer band practice or band camp gets under way or continues for Liberty High School, Freedom High School, Northeast Middle School and East Hills Middle School.

• If you Bethlehem headbangers—and we’re sure you are out there—aren’t getting a sufficient dose of heavy metal at Musikfest, head over to the Sands Event Center at 8 p.m. Wednesday for Godsmack. The alt metal, hard rockers from Massachusetts have toured with Ozzfest and Motley Crue’s Crue Fest. Tickets are $49.50 or $69.50 for luxury seating.

It might also be an alternative for those of you who have been shut out Wednesday’s Musikfest main stage show with Styx and Foreigner, which sold out last week.