Parade to wind through West Central
Three Rivers Festival event will return to its pre-2003 starting point
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"For the first time since 2002, marching bands, clowns and floats will again parade through the historic West Central Neighborhood in July. And Kevin Knuth couldn’t be happier.
“Sounds great,” the West Central resident said when informed Wednesday that the Fort Wayne Newspapers Three Rivers Festival will once again route the National City Parade down Wayne Street, beginning at Rockhill Street. Knuth and his family, who live on West Wayne Street, used to have a party at their house every year as the parade passed by, until the route was shortened in 2003 because of the flood that summer."
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"West Central residents, however, missed having the parade pass their homes. Knuth said he thinks the fun of having a parade in the neighborhood — whose streets were a popular viewing point — far surpassed the inconvenience of closing the streets a few hours.
“It makes the parade route longer, and there’s more of an area for people to go to view it without feeling crowded,” said TRF Executive Director Shannon White. “Just going through West Central is such a pretty neighborhood anyway.”
The change is the latest that has the festival — celebrating its 40th anniversary this year — harkening to its roots. White, who replaced Alter after the 2005 festival, brought back the wildly popular bed race last year and secured a sponsorship from Sweetwater Sound that allowed nine high school marching bands to march in last year’s parade, making it one of the largest ever."
1 comments:
Slight correction - the parade is not returning to its exact starting point. The old route went down Thieme Drive right in front of my home to Wayne and then east on Wayne to Van Buren. The new route is starting farther to the east at Rockhill and skipping the Thieme Drive route.
I will miss that part, but having the parade going through a part of West Central again is great and something we have hoped for ever since the route was changed after the Flood of 2003.
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