Silver City Days are feeling the growing pains of downtown re-development.
Coun. Sandy Santori says the committee recently met to begin tackling the event’s biggest challenge in May 2018, that being, the location of the midway itself.
For years, the city’s two vacant Esplanade lots housed the majority of the fair’s set-up as games and food vendors lined the streets.
With the vacant properties sold and a section of the south lot delineated for Riverfront Centre parking, the Silver City Days committee is having to re-think logistics.
“We are just getting our ducks in order,” Santori reported. “Having said that we will have some challenges this year in terms of the midway location … we have to go to a Plan B and try to see if we can accommodate the same area in which it was held before, we are favouring that.”
Santori was referring to the possibility of moving the fairgrounds south to the blocks along Helena and Portland streets . However, that idea also presents certain challenges such as traffic pattern changes.
“I think, hopefully, we can come up with some sort of compromise before we make that decision,” Santori said. “We are not going to start closing roads and creating a disturbance, and I did inform the committee that we would have to come back to council for approval.”
If an alternative locale cannot be worked out at the south end of town, the annual event may return to its former stomping grounds.
“We may have to look at going back to the arena (Trail Memorial Centre parking lot),” Santori said. “It is not the preferred location … (there are) traffic challenges there as well.”