FIESTA La Peel has migrated.
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The much-loved multicultural food festival has ditched its homeland on Peel Street for the first time ever; a move prompted by overcrowding complaints, organisers said.
This year, the food and retail stalls will fill the new Fitzroy Street mall and spill over on to Kable Avenue and into Bicentennial Park.
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Event coordinator Carol Hughes said it was a much better facility for the street party.
“The community members were very shoulder-to-shoulder last year, which isn’t fun,” Mrs Hughes said.
She said there was a lot of feedback registered following last year’s event.
“We only had two lots of criticism” she said.
“One was ‘we can’t see the stage, only the people closest to the stage can see it.
“So we now have a bigger stage.
“The other complaint was things on social media like ‘I don’t think I’ll go back to that event, it was way too crowded’.”
Despite the move, there are no plans to change the event’s name.
In terms of numbers, this will be the biggest Fiesta yet with 60 stalls and 46 nations represented in cuisine and retail.
The record for attendance was set in 2017 where organisers said 13,000 people plodded through the Peel Street party.
But we might not ever know if the record will be surpassed.
Crowd counting will not be conducted at this event, despite tallies being taken at each previous Fiesta.
“We just know if the crowd’s as big as last year, then it’s still approximately 13,000 people, if we overcrowd this new venue as well, we’ll know it has far-exceeded last year’s numbers,” Mrs Hughes said.
“We just know it keeps growing and if it never grew any more it’s a fabulous event for our region.”
Fiesta La Peel is on Saturday, October 13 in the Fitzroy Street plaza from 4pm to 8:30pm.