One week after the Kinsmen Sidewalk Days concluded in downtown Moose Jaw, its organizers are pointing to three days of co-operative weather and a record setting vendor attendance as they called the festival “a success.”
All said, 229 unique vendors were registered for Sidewalk Days 2024, which is up from the previous 2016 record of 210 vendors. The officially stated figure of 249 includes all available vendor spots, but 20 of those spots were double filled as some vendors required additional space.
“I would have to say that, from our perspective, (this) was the smoothest-running Sidewalk Days that we’ve ever put on,” announced Jacki L’Heureux-Mason, executive director of Tourism Moose Jaw (TMJ) and chair of the Sidewalk Days Festival Committee.
“We really feel like we hit the mark on pretty much everything,” she added.
Some of the highlights from this year’s festival included the Battle of the Bands, a new three-day scavenger hunt, and the new Duel Zone rings provided by Déjà vu Café.
“I’m going to start by saying the entertainment… was outstanding,” she said. With the festival’s growing popularity, L’Heureux-Mason said TMJ can be more selective and this appears to have improved the overall quality of its street performances.
As it’s impractical to count every visitor, TMJ uses a mathematical formula like the Jacobs Crowd Formula to estimate how many people were in attendance by extrapolating a total from given samples.
Using this formula, TMJ estimates that they saw the best Thursday turnout in the history of the festival, with Friday being average and Saturday being “just slightly above average,” and with an estimated 23,000 visitors attending over three days.
The closest comparison was to the 2016 festival which L’Heureux-Mason described as “an anomaly,” mostly due to several “huge events going on in the city that really helped us.”
To explain this year’s attendance, L’Heureux-Mason suggested that a post-pandemic economic upturn has led to the growth of more home-based businesses who utilized the space for affordable promotion. For brick and mortar retailers, she said many pointed toward increasing costs and more took advantage of the promotion offered by Sidewalk Days.
Although provided as an estimate, L’Heureux-Mason said the event raised around $54,000. Most of these funds were used to cover overheads, which she said ran around $49,000.
The remaining $5,000 — which is an estimate — covered some of TMJ’s permanent staff wages after all overheads were met, and L’Heureux-Mason said the remainder was reinvested.
“We really try every year to add something new,” she said. “When I started, I think we had five bouncy (castles). This year, I’m going to say we had 11.”
Around 70 volunteers showed up from an initial pool of 90 — the most volunteers Sidewalk Days had ever seen.
“It was the first time we didn’t have to… shut something down because we didn’t have enough people,” she noted.
L’Heureux-Mason mentioned her committee including Trish German, the vendor co-ordinator and her assistant, Heather MacNevin; Everley Reid, the children’s village and volunteer co-ordinator; Darlene Guy, operations co-ordinator; and summer students Paige McClinton and Sydney Woodrow.
Bret Rowlinson, the GIS (Geospatial Information Systems) supervisor with the City of Moose Jaw, was mentioned for his help co-ordinating vendor spaces with a highly accurate electronic map of Moose Jaw’s downtown.
L’Heureux-Mason thanked the Moose Jaw Kinsmen Club for their ongoing support, and included a special mention for Travis Penna, who she described as “the patron saint of Sidewalk Days” for his continued assistance.
“Without our sponsors, we could not (have made Sidewalk Days happen),” she concluded.
To view a list of this year’s sponsors, visit TourismMooseJaw.com.
