Downtown St. Catharines ‘Pedestrian Street’ finale fizzles in the drizzle

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Published November 1, 2021 at 8:45 am

The grand finale of the street closures on St Paul St in downtown St. Catharine on October 29-30 came to a soggy finale.

In fact, Mother Nature dumped so much of the wet stuff on Friday night (above photo) that the city didn’t even bother to barricade St Paul St for pedestrians as there were preciously few out.

While the pedestrian paradise – the stretch on St Paul Street from William to Carlisle and from Bond to Court Street – was originally meant to be shut down October 10, the city and St. Catharines Downtown Association extended it to the end of the month.

Those sections were blocked off on Fridays and Saturdays from 4 to 10 pm.

Saturday was at least nice enough during the day that after the city barricaded the street, a couple of dozen children and parents were able to hold a Halloween parade down the middle of the street while it was still light out.

By early evening, though, the rain returned and while people, notably university students, were out and about in costume, going to the local bars, the blocked-off street didn’t actually see that much foot traffic.

The initiative for the blocked streets was two-fold. First, it was meant to create an atmosphere of relaxed wandering as pedestrians had the run of the street. But more importantly, it allowed restaurants to extend their patios, taking over the sidewalks and even small portions of the street.

And on October 30 at exactly 10 pm, that ended as city staff (below) came to collect the barricades for the last time this year.

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