River Falls Days 2019 to go without carnival

River Falls Days is an annual summer event that brings together the community of Pierce and St. Croix counties. Every year the event has notable activities for families and adults, but this year, River Falls Days will not be having a carnival.

The search for a location for the carnival was to find a location that was close enough to the downtown stretch of main street, where the majority of the River Falls Days events would be takes place. A location was chosen by the River Falls Chamber of Commerce and Tourism Bureau for the back alley behind the River Falls Police Department near the corner of Maple and Main Streets.

Chris Blasius, the chief executive officer of the River Falls Chamber of Commerce and Tourism Bureau, was one of the city officials who took on the task of finding an appropriate location for the River Falls Days Carnival. “Staff went door to door and had conversations with all the businesses, so we kind of did a divide and conquer. We identified a list of all of the businesses that we felt would have a direct impact with from a proximity where the festival grounds, or the carnival would be situated,” said Blasius.

Blasius continued, “We either went door to door and tried to have a conversation, that was our first preference, and reach them by that, or we were making phone calls to have a conversation. We did that leading up to it. We just wanted to be very transparent in the process, ask the pros and cons and thoughts and feedback. We have at this point believe we have exhausted our search (for a carnival location) and are recommending that we are not going to move forward with the carnival in 2019.”

The decision to not move forward with the carnival for the 2019 River Falls Days came after multiple employees from the businesses affected by the originally proposed location attended the February 12, River Falls City Council meeting expressing their concerns of the location. If the carnival for River Falls Days were still to take place, it would most likely be in the back alley of the corner of Maple and Main Street.

This location would have caused logistical problems for some of the businesses with parking in that alley such as Domino’s Pizza and Johnnies Bar. Daniel Gould. A Domino’s employee explained, “During that week we would have not had enough parking space to store our drivers. We would have been losing a lot of business to pizza franchises with better locations, Little Caesars, Pizza Hut etc. for that week. On average this is probably, us and Steve’s Pizza are the best locations for pizza here in town. It’s right in the middle of all the bars, right in the middle of everything that is happening in town.”  

River Falls Days will be taking place from July 11-14. The event hosts a fireworks show, a parade on Main Street, a 2 mile kids run, and live music.