(Seguin) — The COVID-19 pandemic is not going to stop the city of Seguin from celebrating the holidays this year. City staff unveiled the officials plans for two popular events — the Lighted Holiday Stroll Parade and the Cocoa Sip-N-Stroll. Both celebrations will be significantly modified to keep the community safe.
Parks Director Jack Jones explained the plan during Tuesday’s meeting of the Seguin City Council. Jones says the holiday displays will not be parading, instead they will be stationary in Starcke Park and it’s the community that will be driving by parade-style to see the holiday lights.
“We put this plan together for a stationary parade so basically, instead of the parade rolling down the street and passing all the spectators like in the past, the parade is going to be parked and the spectators are going to be in their vehicles passing by the parade so we put together a plan here for it to happen in Max Starcke Park East,” said Jones.
Moving the event to Starcke Park provides more room for parade entries, and for the parade watchers that will be driving by safely in their cars.
“You come under the bridge and you will enter Starcke Park East by the Little League Fields and we’ve got enough room for approximately 40-50 floats of cars and floats all lit up. We’ve got a couple of special locations for the Seguin High School Band and we’ve talked to them and they’ve indicated through an email that the superintendent’s leadership team is excited about this plan and is well received. We’re also talking to the Navarro High School Band and have a place for them in between the Little League fields and so we are still talking to them about coming out but it’s a parade but it’s not going to be a moving parade,” said Jones.
Seguin Mayor Don Keil has chosen they men and women of the Seguin Police Department to serve as the parade marshals this year. Jones says they looked at how they could incorporate that into the stationary parade, and he says they have a good plan in place.
“The parade route will be coming, of course by the Little League Fields and around just like the traffic flow is today but at the end, we will have real police cars on both sides of the road lit up. Towards the end will be the city council float. We’ll have that decorated like we’ve always had in the past and at the very end will be Santa Clause and hopefully, (Fire) Chief (Dale) Skinner’s old fire truck,” said Jones.
Jones says their plan for the holiday parade also includes a safe route for people to get into the park. Instead of the normal entry points, cars will be diverted to the backside entry on the west side of the park and they will then come up River Road to access the stationary displays on the east side of Starcke Park.
“We don’t know if we are going to get 100 cars or 1,000 cars coming through so basically, we are going to have folks coming down South Austin Street and turning onto Nelda Street heading west past the Fairgrounds and then turning south on Boenig Street and then going through Starcke Park West through the back gate — going all the way down to where we can stage people. If we hit a lot of traffic, you can stage them right here and then we can release cars under the bridge — 20 or so or 30 or so and let them go through. We are worried about stacking up vehicles on South Austin Street,” said Jones.
The Lighted Holiday Stroll Parade will run from 6:30 to 8 p.m.on Thursday, December 3 in Max Starcke Park. Jones says they are excited to be able to offer this parade as a safer alternative this year.
While the parade will go on, the popular Cocoa Sip-N-Stroll event, which normally occurs on the Friday after the Holiday Stroll Parade, will not happen this year — at least not like it has in the past. Main Street and CVB Director Kyle Kramm says they just couldn’t find a way to safely host the event, which brings thousands of people to downtown Seguin. He says they will still sell mugs and cocoa can still be found on Friday, December 4, but it will be done on a much smaller scale this year.
“We are still moving forward with the mugs, the Sip N Stroll mugs which they will go on sale this Saturday at Trade Days in Central Park and they will be on sale from now until basically Christmas. But instead of doing one big night of hot cocoa with 40 different stores, offering hot cocoa throughout downtown, we are going to have Cocoa Open Houses every weekend where four or five businesses will be having hot cocoa as a way to kind of still encourage people to come and still shop at our downtown businesses and that they can still come down and find some hot cocoa. It’s just not going to find the 40 different recipes and this will allow the stores to better manage crowds when they open,” said Kramm.
The Seguin City Council, by consensus, gave its blessing to staff’s plans. That means families can now start making plans to add those activities to their 2020 holiday calendar.
The pandemic wiped out Fourth of July events in Seguin this year, and some feared the same would occur during the holiday season, but barring some additional state or federal COVID-19 restrictions, folks will be able to participate in those events in just a few weeks.
