Hometown Pride Tour: St. Patrick’s Day festival economic impact

WICHITA FALLS, Texas (KAUZ) - The St. Patrick’s Day Street Festival is returning to Downtown Wichita Falls on March 10.

The street festival brings a day of fun to downtown Wichita Falls and gives local businesses some exposure to customers they might not usually get.

“A lot of times we hear that when people come down they’re exposed to downtown for the first time, and they start walking around and see a new business that they may not have known was here, so it’s a way to attract traffic into downtown and hopefully get repeat patronage for the businesses down here, and from a tourism aspect, it has a huge impact on the city of Wichita Falls, people will come in for our events,” Executive Director of Wichita Falls Downtown Development, Jana Schmader said.

While the City of Wichita Falls is not involved in organizing the event, City of Wichita Falls Public Information Officer, Chris Horgen said they always support events like this and encourage citizens to come to enjoy the fun. The city provided street barricades for the event.

‘It all comes down to economic development with this. This is something that brings tourism, it brings sales tax dollars, people come to spend money that gets taxed and the city gets part of that, which is always a bonus. Anytime we can have an event that helps raise tax revenue we’re thrilled to support it and do anything we can to help out,” Horgen said.

There’s a 5K starting at 2 p.m. and the street festival starts at 3 p.m. all at Bud Daniel Park.

Tickets are $12 in advance or $15 at the gate.

Copyright 2023 KAUZ. All rights reserved.