City of College Station Blog

Grace Hallowell:

What’s Up, College Station? I’m Grace Hallowell, and today I’m joined with Ms. Barbara Moore from our city manager’s office.

Hi, Barbara.

Barbara Moore:

Hey, Grace. How are you?

Grace Hallowell:

I’m doing well. We are here to talk about the first ever College Station Christmas parade.

Barbara Moore:

Yes, we are.

Grace Hallowell:

And you have been spearheading this operation, and I know I’m excited for it. I’m sure the residents are excited. Let’s start with, what can people expect from the parade?

Barbara Moore:

Well, since this is our first ever Christmas parade, we were just so surprised and overwhelmed with the community’s response with wanting to participate. So Kudos to our community for coming out and being a part of this first time effort. So we’re super excited that so many people wanted to join us and be a part of this historic thing that we’re doing. And so in terms of where the parade will start, it will start and everybody will be lining up in the mall parking lot on the backside of Holleman, on the end by Cavender’s. So we’ll be in that section of the parking lot. And then it will move from Holleman from the staging area down Holleman, and we’ll turn down Dartmouth, cross Southwest Parkway, turn left on Krenek Tap, and then end at Central Park where Christmas in the Parks lights on will be held.

Grace Hallowell:

Yes. So it is a fun route. You can bring your family out, stand all along those ways, ending at the park. And the mall is a great location for this because you can park and also ride a shuttle to Christmas in the Park.

Barbara Moore:

That’s right. You can park there, you can ride the shuttle. It’s also, the route along Dartmouth has so much space for people to come out and watch as well as along the area on Krenek Tap near the police department. So we chose that route because it was a really straight shot. Lots of places for people to park, lots of places for people to spectate. And then we thought it would just be really great to end it right at the time that lights on will happen at the park. And so we have a full day of activities in College Station on December 2nd.

Grace Hallowell:

Yes, it’s a very full fun day. It’s

Barbara Moore:

A full fun day.

Grace Hallowell:

So what sort of floats can people expect from the parade?

Barbara Moore:

We have a little bit of everything. We have classic cars. We have motorcycle groups. We have lots of school children. We have some playgroups. We have lots of businesses from town who are putting together some really cool Christmas theme floats. So for this year, since we got into the planning phase of the parade midway of what you would normally be considered, we just had a Christmas theme in general this year. We didn’t have a particular Christmas theme that we wanted people to gather around, but anything that was Christmas and holiday festive, we said, “Hey, go for it.” So you’ll see lots of holiday music floats. You’ll see a couple of replica cars. And you’ll see a little bit of everything. I think we even had someone that said they had a little snow globe that’s going to be spouting out snow.

Grace Hallowell:

Wow.

Barbara Moore:

Yeah, so look forward to seeing some really cool things. There’s some really creative things we’ve seen so far from people that are going to be participating. So we’re excited about it. At the present time, we have around 70 entries. The BCS Christmas parade for reference usually runs 85 to 100. So we think for a first time effort that’s really great. We actually had to cap participation and cut off registration a little early because we reached our max well before our cutoff time, which was great. So in time-wise, it would probably be running maybe about two hours with the number of entries that we have in the distance. So that’s just for reference. The parade starts at 3:30. We’re hoping it ends around 5:30, right at the time that lights on will start at six at the park.

Grace Hallowell:

Yes. A lot of fun things happening, but there are some rules.

Barbara Moore:

Yes.

Grace Hallowell:

Whenever there’s fun, there has to be rules to keep people safe. So what are some of the most important things that people need to keep in mind?

Barbara Moore:

One of the things that we’re also going to be looking at from the parade side is we are going to have people check in everybody’s trailers, making sure that they’re safe and that the rider are safe and that they’re connected and hitched up correctly. So we have a lot of safety things that we’re looking at on the other end of the parade before people get out there and start rolling down the street.

So we have that in, but we also, no one is allowed to throw things from their floats or throw things from their cars. You can have people from your group walk alongside you and pass out things, but it’s just a safety hazard when you’re throwing things and you have little children that are running into the lanes of the parade to pick up things. We wouldn’t want to see anyone hurt. So in keeping with rules of other parades that we’ve had, we won’t allow people to throw things from the parade.

We are also very making sure that everybody’s using holiday themed music and appropriate Christmas music. So that’s one of the things you hear. Everybody’s going to be playing some form of Christmas music. We didn’t go through and rubber-stamping, but we made sure that it was good holiday fun, children friendly Christmas music.

One of the other rules that we had was there’s only one Santa. So we had to make sure that we don’t want to confuse the kids if they see more than one Santa. There will only be one Santa. You had a couple of people that wanted to dress up as Santa or have Santa themed things and we had to say, “Well, we have one Santa.”

Grace Hallowell:

The one and only Santa.

Barbara Moore:

The one and only Santa. So we had to make sure that we respected the rules of the Santa community. That one Santa is all you need in a parade. So yes, those are some of the basics.

Grace Hallowell:

And for participants, as far as things not being thrown, do not run from the sidewalk or where you’re standing up to the floats. That’s very important.

Barbara Moore:

That is right. Let the people who are walking along, if they’re passing out something, you can come up to them, but don’t run into the lane of the parade. Just be a good spectator and be safe. And so we will have the police department and our traffic engineering department who have done a fantastic job in putting this together. All the traffic layouts, the routes, everything has done such a good job. We’ll also have some of our motor officers rolling through as the parade is going on, making sure that everyone is safe and people are respecting the rules that we set up and making sure that everything is done correctly. So yes, we have all those things lined up. And we’re just excited to see people come out on Saturday praying that there is no rain. There’s slight rain chances earlier in this week. Hopefully, they will all be gone by Saturday.

Grace Hallowell:

Yes. But it is rain or shine.

Barbara Moore:

It is rain or shine. That is correct. And so we’ve told all of our participants to plan for that. If you see the rain chances increase before Saturday, just plan on having your rain boots and a poncho and still get your wave on out there. And we’re saying the same thing for the residents that are coming as well. Just be sure if there is a rain chance, that you’re dressed appropriately.

Grace Hallowell:

All right, well if people have questions or want to view the parade route or where to park, where can they go to find more?

Barbara Moore:

Yes, they can go to cstx.gov/parade. We have a webpage set up where you can go and see all things parade. You can find where to park. You can find different places along the route where you may want to go and set up with your family. You can see where the route ends and some of the activities of the day when things start at Central Park. So that’s a good place. If anybody has any additional questions, they can also send an email to parade@cstx.gov.

Grace Hallowell:

Well, thank you so much for being here today, Barbara.

Barbara Moore:

Thank you for having me.

Grace Hallowell:

You’re welcome. And that’s what’s up.

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