EAST PEORIA — Running out of gas and getting increasingly difficult to justify in terms of effort and costs, the East Peoria Festival of Lights Parade and Winter Wonderland lighted sculpture exhibit nearly winked out earlier this decade.
City officials instead chose to redouble their efforts, to positive effect.
"This year might have been the best ever," Doug McCarty, East Peoria's director of tourism and special events, said Thursday.
While the official numbers still are being tabulated for the events that ran from the night after Thanksgiving through New Year's Eve, both McCarty and East Peoria Chamber of Commerce Director Rick Swan say there is plenty of evidence to suggest the 2017 run was another success in its resurgence.
"I'd call it another banner year," Swan said Thursday.
McCarty said it appears the traffic through the Winter Wonderland in Veteran's Park off Springfield Road in 2017 will be somewhere around the 25,000 mark, where it has been the last several years. Long lines of cars lined Springfield Road on Friday and Saturday nights, despite the city's encouragement of local visitors to drive through the park on weekdays.
"The cold and snow around Christmas actually helped, because people like to see the lights in the snow," McCarty said.
Success is measured beyond the parade and Winter Wonderland numbers. Participation in the annual Miss Festival of Lights set a record with 11 contestants, and the event was performed in front of a third consecutive sold-out crowd. Two road races drew 500 runners. And new events like Santa Claus visits at the lighted exhibit at the Civic Complex on Friday nights drew lines of families and children.
"It looks like we are doing a lot of things right," McCarty said. "We're at a point where we can't grow it much bigger than it is without causing more problems, but I like where we are right now."
Swan and McCarty worked the admission booth to the Winter Wonderland on Christmas Eve. Inside many cars that rolled through the park were shopping bags from local stores such as Costco, Bass Pro and many of the dining and food options in the city's Levee District, Swan said.
"It's not just good for East Peoria," Swan said. "People tell us they came to ice skate at the Civic Center in Peoria, or go to a show. Make it a day in central Illinois. The whole thing is a testament to the work of McCarty and the EastSide Centre crew and all the volunteers and sponsors. They're the ones out in the cold and the snow and the wind so that at 5 o'clock every night the lights go on and the crowds come through. It's a holiday tradition for a lot of people."
Scott Hilyard can be reached at 686-3244 or by email at shilyard@pjstar.com. Follow @scotthilyard on Twitter.