A parade route change for the November 2015 32nd annual North Carolina Holiday Flotilla was discussed during a board meeting Monday, June 22.
“We used to line up near Airlie. There’s very few houses over there. . . . We missed Bluewater, Bridge Tender. We didn’t really give Dockside that much of a view,” said Pres Davenport, the committee’s chairman. “Now, we’ll line them up on the north side, just north of Summer Rest Road, and then we’ll move them straight through so the people at Lees Cut will get a glancing view and then all of those marine restaurants will get a direct view.”
Davenport thinks the route change will stimulate the local economy.
“There’s a number of reasons why we have the flotilla to begin with,” he said. “I think part of that is to bring people to the beach during the off-season. This is a way for us to really make this beneficial to all those businesses.”
Davenport said the new route will also benefit onlookers with physical disabilities.
“It also provides us with handicap access for people. All those restaurants are handicap accessible. We’ve had people asking for that in the past,” he said.
The possibility of increased traffic during the parade due to the new route was also discussed. “The risk is obviously increased traffic on the bridge, but the bridge was going up anyway and we can put the bigger boats on the other side if we have too many big boats that are going to cause a problem. We don’t anticipate that being too big of an issue,” Davenport said.
The Wrightsville Beach Board of Aldermen approved the route change during a June 11 meeting.
“I had to appear before the town council. . . . The council was all in favor of us doing this,” said committee member Linda Brown. “The town’s really excited about it, and I think it’ll help with traffic, too. …We’ll try it this year, and then we’ll evaluate it. If it’s successful — great. If not, then we won’t do it again.”
Like Davenport, Brown doesn’t think vehicular traffic will be an issue during this year’s parade.
“I think it’ll help with the traffic, too. . . . All these people — like Summer Rest — and all these people in the condos will see it all.”
The flotilla committee also discussed a plan to include students from D.C. Virgo Preparatory Academy’s science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) program in this year’s parade.
“We haven’t ironed out yet whether their students will be decorating a boat, sort of designing a boat for someone else to decorate or just riding on the boat,” Davenport said. “They just finished up school. We are planning to reconnect with them pretty soon to talk to them about what they want to do, but they may go as far as working it into a class project.”
Davenport said he hopes the committee will be able to find someone to sponsor the students’ boat after the details of the project have been determined.
“We’d like to have five to seven kids on the boat. You’re looking at wanting to have a 23-foot or larger boat at that point, just so it’s comfortable for the kids,” he said.
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