While Waterloo Regionl Police have essentially closed off the usual St. Patrick’s Day party spot in Waterloo, students have just taken their revelry across the street.
Normally, the parties would occur on Ezra Avenue, where police estimated that 33,000 people partied in 2019.
At around 1:15 p.m., police announced on Twitter that they had closed Marshall Street, between Regina and Brighton streets.
“Some of the parties have moved off of the property and onto the street, so for safety reasons, we have closed that location while we try to get the individuals back onto their property,” police spokesperson Cherri Greeno told Global News.
An hour later, police announced that the closure had been extended to King Street while they had also shut down Regina Street between Elgin and Lodge streets.
“We’ve closed the areas (updated on Twitter) due to large volume of pedestrian traffic,” Greeno said in an email.
She said more than a dozen parties have broken out in the area, which is close to being directly on the other side of King Street from Ezra Avenue.
“We did have about 15 house parties that we were monitoring and just recently one has kind of spilled out onto the street,” Greeno said.
“So we’re continuing to monitor. We have a significant operational plan in place.”