At 6:30 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 4, the Erie Chamber of Commerce's Parade of Lights starts at Maxwell Avenue and heads north on Briggs Street toward Cheesman. By then the free carriage rides have already stopped. They run from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. that evening, so they end as the parade begins. Those two hours are the busiest carriage window of the season, and there are four other dates with rides, three of them on Thursday evenings.
Downtown Erie's holiday calendar comes from two groups. The Chamber runs the parade. The We Love Erie Business Collective runs Shop Small Erie and its own series of free carriage rides: one Saturday afternoon and three Thursday evenings, with the Thursdays running three hours each. If you live here, the most relaxed way to see Briggs Street lit up is on a night with no street closures.
Parade night runs on a tight clock
The Chamber's Parade of Lights page packs a lot into one evening, and the schedule overlaps:
- 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. School choirs sing inside Orchard Community Church at 470 Briggs St., which also has free hot chocolate, snacks and restrooms.
- 4:30 to 6:00 p.m. Santa and Mrs. Claus visit on Briggs Street.
- 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Free carriage rides.
- 6:30 p.m. The parade starts.
Open skating at the Erie Ice Rink, 575 Kattell St., is part of the evening too. Calvary Bible Church will have a tent on Briggs with more free hot chocolate. Food vendors set up on Wells and Briggs, including JLK Kettle Corn, Deborah Ann Does Donuts, Kogler's Bakery, a Belgian waffle stand and Chick-fil-A. The Chamber also suggests coming early to eat at the downtown restaurants. The lost-children and first-aid tents will be next to the DJ by Fox Dog Coffee on Briggs. That's a good meeting spot to set with the kids before anyone wanders off.
Santa, the choirs and the carriages all happen in roughly the same 90 minutes before the parade. Families who want all three will be moving between them on crowded sidewalks, with every other family trying to do the same thing.
What 6:30 p.m. means if you live east of Briggs
The parade affects driving and parking for much of the afternoon and evening. The Chamber's posted restrictions are:
- No parking, 2:00 to 10:00 p.m. Briggs Street from Maxwell Avenue to Evans Street, and Kattell Street from Moffat Street to Cheesman Street.
- Closed, 4:00 to 10:00 p.m. Briggs from Anderson Street to Evans Street, and Kattell from Moffat to Cheesman.
- Fully closed, 5:45 to 10:00 p.m. Briggs from Perry Street to Evans Street, along with every street that crosses Briggs in that stretch. The section from Perry to Erie Parkway starts reopening once the parade has passed.
Once the parade starts at 6:30, residents and businesses east of Briggs Street have no vehicle access in or out. For emergencies, the Chamber says to call 911, and it lists 303-441-4444 as the non-emergency number. If you need the post office that day, you can reach it until 6 p.m. Go north on Kattell, turn west on Moffat, then take the alley north into the post office lot, and leave the same way you came in.
If you're driving in, park along residential streets, in the Erie Methodist Church lot on Holbrook Street just west of Town Hall, or in the Town Hall lot at Holbrook and Cheesman. Alleys are off-limits because first responders need them clear. A few ADA spaces are available behind Orchard Community Church at Moffat Street and in the lot south of Coal Creek Park on Kattell. You have to be parked there by 5:45 p.m., and you won't be able to move your vehicle until the parade is over.
Local groups and businesses can still enter a float. According to the Chamber's application, entries and the $25 fee are due by noon on Monday, Nov. 30.
Shop Small Saturday starts the season at Coal Creek Park
We Love Erie's season starts Saturday, Nov. 28, with Shop Small Erie, presented by ALLO Fiber and the Town of Erie. It runs downtown from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. The first 150 people at the 11 a.m. kickoff get free Shop Small Erie tote bags, and some of the bags include surprise gift cards to local businesses. A holiday winter market runs all three hours, with DJ Orion Giant playing holiday music. Participating shops will offer discounts.
The first round of free carriage rides runs from noon to 2 p.m. that day and starts from the Coal Creek Park parking lot at 575 Kattell St. That's the same address the Chamber gives for the Erie Ice Rink on parade night. If you've ridden from there on Saturday, you'll already know your way around Coal Creek Park six days later.
The Thursday rides leave from Piripi, with no road closures
The rest of the We Love Erie rides are on Thursdays: Dec. 3, Dec. 10 and Dec. 17. Each runs from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. and starts at Piripi, 615 Briggs St. ALLO Fiber is the presenting sponsor, and the rides are free.
Compare that with the parade. On Dec. 4, carriage rides last two hours and end when the parade starts. The three Thursdays add up to nine hours of rides. None of those nights has the 2 p.m. parking ban, the 5:45 p.m. closure of Briggs or the 6:30 p.m. cutoff for drivers east of Briggs. The rides start at 4:30, so you can get there after work or after school pickup, and the evening stays on Briggs Street.
Dec. 3 falls the night before the parade. If you want a carriage ride and the parade too, you can take the ride Thursday and spend Friday on Santa, the choirs and finding a spot along the route.
The starting point also makes it easy to have dinner. Piripi calls itself a Latin and Mediterranean restaurant that specializes in gluten-free Mediterranean food, with flavors ranging from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean. On a Thursday you can eat there and then ride, and the street outside is open to traffic.
The blocks along the route are changing
The carriage routes aren't posted, but anyone at Piripi or Coal Creek Park is already in the middle of downtown, and several parts of it are changing this season. The Town of Erie's October 12 business newsletter reported that Johnny Bechamel's was aiming to open in late November at 656 Kattell St. That's the same street as the Erie Ice Rink, on the Coal Creek Park side of downtown. The restaurant's own Erie page says it is opening "this fall." 9News described Johnny Bechamel's as an Italian-American restaurant from Mamas & Papas Hospitality, serving handmade pasta, Neo-Neapolitan-style pizza and cocktails. The Denver Post reported that the Denver location is owned and run by co-chefs Alex Figura and Spencer White and operations director Lulu Clair.
The same newsletter had a few more downtown updates. The board of TOEURA, Erie's urban renewal authority, approved an agreement with Gaia Development to redevelop the URA-owned property at Briggs and Maxwell, the corner where the parade starts. Planning is also continuing on the 130 Wells development and on improvements to the Briggs Street alleyway. Two Briggs Street businesses were on the newsletter's "Coming Soon" list: Erie Cor Arts at 365 Briggs and Little Grove at 512 Briggs. Whitney Lane Aesthetics was listed at a new location, 149 S. Briggs. The newsletter also reported that the new CO-Create Erie Makerspace had received its certificate of occupancy, so CO-Create Erie could start moving in.
The downtown you see from a carriage on Dec. 17 is different from last December's, and the Thursday evenings give you time to look around.
Many of the small businesses behind Shop Small Erie and the carriage rides are the same ones that keep Erie's downtown going all year, and we like seeing them do well. If a December stroll down Briggs Street has you thinking about your own place in Erie, Dwellings Colorado is glad to help with a free home valuation. A senior broker will go over what your Erie home is worth right now.
