Albany's St. Patrick’s Day Parade is tomorrow. The city is pulling out the stops to make the 66th annual march a memorable and family-friendly event.
Mayor Kathy Sheehan announced plans this week at City Hall to make this year’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade friendlier for the roughly 25,000 people expected to attend.
The mayor stressed that organizers have worked hard over the last two years to clean up the parade's image. "This has always been intended to be a family-friendly event. Our families are very important to us. It's part of our Irish heritage and we want a parade that we can bring our children to and that we can point to with pride for all that it celebrates."
City Police Chief Brendan Cox says his department will strictly enforce the open container law, which forbids drinking in public. He's calling on parade-goers to "be vigilant." "We ask people if they see something, say something. So we certainly ask anybody coming along if they see anybody, anything that's suspicious, to make sure that they give us a call, as well as the 911 number. We will also be publishing a specific number that is just dedicated to any non-emergency issues along the parade route. We'll have our communications workers that are actually gonna be available and be answering that number, just for issues along the parade route. We'll have a lot of officers up throughout the parade route, making sure everybody's having a good time."
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin, also known as the Easter Rebellion, which is considered the beginning of the modern movement for an independent Irish Republic. On parade day, the city’s Irish Heritage Museum will be hosting a new event: the Irish-American Family Festival in Academy Park. Chasity McGivern is with the museum: "We will be having music, Irish step dancing, food, and a lot of different Irish vendors as well. It does go from 12 to 5:30, it is all family-friendly, and there is no alcohol."
Georgette Steffens, Executive Director of the Downtown Albany BID, says parade day is a big business day. "We bring in 25,000+ visitors to the parade, along the parade route, many of who come and stay at our hotels and make a weekend of the event."
Albany’s three Business Improvement Districts will have reserved viewing areas along the parade route for people who want to go to lunch before the parade and have viewing spots. To use the viewing areas, people will get wristbands or can show a receipt from a restaurant at any of the four designated viewing areas.
Again, Chief Cox. "Saturday will be a busy day. Outside of the parade there's also an event at the Palace: Bonnie Raitt is at the Palace, so certainly that will be a busy show. And on parade day it's always busy. With the new event for the Irish Heritage Museum. That will be going on 'til 5:30 so that will be busy. What we ask is that folks remember that traffic will be busy. People need to be patient and more than anything, people need to be responsible. So we wanna make sure people have designated drivers, people don't drink and drive, follow the rules of the road. We want everybody to have a safe and happy parade day."
Also, state police will have extra sobriety checkpoints and DWI patrols around the region this week.
