Four kilometres of a major downtown Hamilton, Ont. corridor is set to transform into a gala this weekend welcoming nothing but foot traffic and activity stations.
The 2023 edition of the Open Streets Hamilton festival is the biggest the city has ever seen and it will close King Street East between Gore and Gage Parks for four hours on Sunday.
“It’s really creating this temporary space like an urban park where you can come for recreation, whether it’s walking, cycling or wheeling and going to some activity hubs. There are five activity hubs across the corridor,” said Peter Topalovic, City of Hamilton active transportation and mobility, in an interview with 900 CHML.
The open streets program has been adopted by a number of cities worldwide, starting 1974 in Bogota, Columbia.
That South American event, called Cyclovia (translated to “Cycle-way”), closes major streets to vehicular traffic on Sundays, and still runs today using 122 kilometres of roadway in the program.
Toronto, Ottawa, New York City and Guadalajara are examples of some other large cities across North America that have similar events.
Hamilton’s version started in 2010 and has had successful runs on James St. North and Barton Street East.
The King Street East version will close the roadway from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Sunday and will double as an experiment to see how Hamiltonians cope with the closure of a thoroughfare set to become part of a permanent light rail transit (LRT) route.
Topalovic said the event will help the city “better understand how that works and whether it’s a benefit to the area and the businesses, which I think is one of the key pieces of this … because it’s not really a street festival, it’s really a temporary urban park.”
With the help of the city’s business improvement associations (BIAs) and other local businesses, Open Streets will have five activity hubs offering 40 different activations geared toward families and individuals.
Topalovic says with the new venue, it’s hard to predict how many will attend.
Organizers estimate it could be between 7,000 and 25,000 arriving at various stages.
“We believe it will be hard to cover because people are going to be coming through as opposed to staying,” Topalovic said.
“So it’ll be hard to get that count, but yes, that’s sort of the numbers we’re thinking of.”
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