By Future Brown, Herald Democrat
The region is just weeks away from one of the most widely attended festivals to take place in Texoma. The Denison Chamber of Commerce’s 38th annual Fall Festival will be open for festival goers from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Oct. 4 in downtown Denison.
Although portions of Main Street are under construction, Denison Chamber of Commerce President Diana Theall said downtown businesses are open and ready for business and vendor’s have been jumping to get their spots for the event that brings tens of thousands into the area for the packed. day.
Diana Theall
“Not really any major changes this year,” Theall said. “The construction, we had that last year. It was just in a different block.
“This year, we are not going across Austin Avenue. That proved just to be too dangerous. After consulting with the police department, we decided to keep it all between the 200-800 blocks of Main Street.”
The kidz zone will still take place at Waples United Methodist Church.
“We use Placer.AI and it probably can account for about 50-60 percent of your crowd because it captures people over the age of 18 who have phones on and do not have their location services turned off,” Theall said. “So that takes away a big portion of the population. So, it calculated about 25,000 people last year. We also go by the police department’s calculations and fire department calculations. We were around 35,000-45,000 last year.”
She expects this year’s event to be just as packed.
“It was incredible,” she said of the 2024 installment of the festival. “It shows the huge huge impact this event has on our businesses.”
One change people will notice is that Heritage Park will not be the location of the event’s main stage.
“We will have a stage put up in the 200 block,” Theall said. “We have a parking lot with some shade trees and the Yellowjacket boats will also be there without main stage. We will still have our main stage entertainment, but they will be in a different place this year.
“In the 500 block, we will still have the demonstrations from the karate kids, the band from Scott Middle School and all types of things throughout the day.
“In the 600 block, Shawnda Rains Studio will be performing down there. We will have performances all up and down the street. It is going to be a lot of fun.”
While construction will be visible, the businesses around construction zones are open.
“We will have big balloons so just walk down that sidewalk. All those businesses in the 400 block will be open as well,” Theall said.
Along with the downtown storefronts, there will be about 130 vendor booths in downtown.
“This year, we limited to 10-12 food vendors,” Theall said. “We try to limit the number of vendors and food vendors because our downtown is thriving. I would guess we have about 15-20 places to eat downtown. We want to draw traffic into those businesses. So, we are still going to have your corndogs and funnel cakes, but we also have all of our wonderful places downtown to eat at. We are also going to have the unique little artists and vendors who will have booths downtown. But, our businesses also have a lot of really neat things to offer. This gives people a chance to come out and see what is in downtown Denison because it is fun.”
During the event, Theall said she really enjoys seeing the many people who are enjoying the day.
“My favorite part is seeing all the smiling families and seeing the children,” she said. “It is the community. We have such a unique community here in North Texas. It is just so neat to see them enjoying our downtown.”
Theall said when the day is done, she loves seeing the community response and support of one another.
“But, I also like to see social media after when all the businesses are posting, ‘Wow. We had a phenomenal day. This was great and we had people from all over the country coming in.” For me, that does my heart so happy because that is our goal. That is what we do as a chamber is bringing all of our businesses together and helping them succeed.
“And, we all know this has been a tough economy. To have something like this that can help give people a boost into Christmas, is what this is all about.”
