City Stories
New parade route debuts Saturday

The Christmas Light Parade will be the first to use a new parade route designed to improve safety, reduce costs, and offer better spaces for viewing and staging.

Encircling Veterans Memorial Park, the new route extends just over 2 miles, which is a little longer than the old route along Fry Boulevard that spanned 1.7 miles. While the route is longer, the number of streets that need to be blocked is much lower, which significantly reduces police costs while also making the parade safer. It also eliminates the need to hire shuttle buses for parade participants and offers them better parking and lighting for their staging area.

The parade will start at Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway and Coronado Drive at 5:30 p.m. by heading east along MLK. It will turn south onto Avenida Escuela, then west onto Fry Boulevard, and then back north along Coronado Drive before ending where it began at MLK. This route will be closed to traffic from 5 to about 7:30 p.m. Entrances and exits to Veterans Memorial Park will also be closed from 5 to about 7:30 p.m. The Cove will close at 5 p.m. so patrons may leave before the road closures take effect.

All entrances and exits to Cochise Plaza, located on the northeast corner of Fry Boulevard and Coronado Drive will also be closed from 5 to about 7:30 p.m. City staff have directly notified businesses in the plaza via in-person visits.

Coronado Drive will be closed from MLK to Tacoma Drive for parade staging from 3 to 7:30 p.m. Tacoma Drive and Las Brisas Way, east of Coronado Drive, will also be closed starting at 3 p.m.

Residents in the neighborhoods most impacted by the new route have been notified of access changes via direct mail. They were also assured that public safety vehicles will be allowed to interrupt the parade route to access these neighborhoods as needed.