What to know about this year’s St. Patrick’s Day parade in Rockford and PaddyFest in Loves Park
By Steve Summers and Kevin Haas
Rock River Current
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ROCKFORD — This year’s St. Patrick’s Day festivities will start in Rockford and end in Loves Park as the Irish Marching Society holds its annual Paddyfest in a new location.
The parade will continue on its normal route Saturday, March 15. It steps off at 3 p.m. from in front of the Rockford Public Schools administration building, 501 Seventh St. It then goes north on Seventh, turns west on State Street and ends around Water Street.
Then, festivities move to Loves Park City Hall, 100 Heart Blvd., for the annual PaddyFest food and music festival. That runs from 4:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
“We’re having a hard time finding the space for all our attendees to fit in one room, and Loves Park City Hall seemed to be a good solution for that,” Tyler Pickering of the Irish Marching Society said on This Week in the Stateline. “Our event ends at 7:30 p.m., but it kind of ends when people are ready to go home and go to bed.”
The group won’t be attempting to dye the Rock River green this year.
“It was a hard effort,” Pickering said. “The river is rather brown and at this time of a year it moves very quickly with all the melting snow and the additional water levels. So it was hard to control the ecological tested dye.”
Listen to Pickering discuss details for this year’s event in the podcast (player at the top of the story).
