Cancelled: Downtown Billings St. Paddy's Day 2021 Festivities
February 2, 2021 | Downtown Billings Media Release
Billings, MT | It's incredible to think that the cancellation of Billings' 2020 St. Patrick's Day festivities unofficially marked the beginning of life completely changing as we knew it. Here we are one year later, with vaccines rolling out and daily numbers steadying, but still not where we need to be for life as we knew it to fully resume. As such, the 2021 Downtown Billings St. Patrick's Day Parade, Celtic Fair, and Street Party have been cancelled due to the ongoing challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.
This community event is coordinated annually by the Downtown Billings Alliance (DBA) and sponsored by Hooligans Sports Bar. Over the last 11 months the DBA, a local non-profit organization, has worked closely with downtown business and property owners to provide tools and resources needed to keep the downtown community open and safe for visitors, workers, and residents.
Since those first cancellations swept across the community, much has been learned, globally and locally; about the virus, best practices to keep community members safe, and ways to reduce its spread. That focus on reducing spread has been about helping to keep our healthcare resources from becoming overwhelmed so everyone in the community can receive the help they need. Katy Easton, CEO of the DBA adds “We are extremely thankful for the commitment, compassion, and sacrifice of the hardworking healthcare professionals here in Yellowstone County and across the nation. We remain hopeful that as more of our community is vaccinated for COVID-19 our organization is able to add larger events to the calendar.”
Meanwhile, the DBA will continue to add fun downtown happenings and micro-events to the downtown calendar. Micro-events are smaller events where participants are encouraged to pre-register or purchase tickets for; often there’s limited participation numbers to allow for COVID-19 safety precautions. Upcoming downtown micro-events include the Mug Crawl event, scheduled for February 13, 2021, a 2021 Chalk on the Walk event and a Purple 5k Run both to be scheduled soon. “We’re very hopeful that the second half of the year includes some of the larger community events we’ve all missed; like HarvestFest, the Christmas Parade and Stroll. As of right now we’re unsure what the summer event season will look like, but as soon as we can we will get more events on the calendar.” says Lindsay Richardson, DBA Director of Community Engagement and Events.
