WICHITA FALLS (KFDX/KJTL) — Live music, bounce houses, hot dogs, and lots of green is what could be found this evening downtown, take a look.

The first full St. Patty’s festival since the pandemic was back and stronger than ever.

“If people haven’t been down here to the downtown area, what’s new, what’s happening, all the shops and stuff going on down here. And then the economic impact, you know, we’ve got people coming in from out of town from here, so hopefully, they are spending money,
all over town and that helps bring in more tax sales dollars,” Marketing Director of Downtown Development, Jeanette Charos said.

Crowds filled downtown to celebrate the block party that had something for people of all ages.
Scottish and Irish attendee James Hughes said he’s happy to see Wichita Falls throw
a festival like this honoring his heritage,

“I think St. Patrick’s Day is kind of something that gets overlooked a lot, I’m glad they are starting to bring in things here for Wichita Falls, especially this year, I feel like there’s a lot more going on than what there was last year, a lot of food out here, a lot of festivities and games for the kids and everything, just nice to see Wichita Falls finally doing something to help people get together and enjoy each other,” Attendee James Hughes said.

“Because it’s fun and our birthday is Monday, so it’s St. Patrick’s Day might as well celebrate for our birthday,” Attendees Angel Wilkinson and Tamara Upton said.

All proceeds brought in by the event went directly into downtown development to help improve the city and host more events like this.

“Projects like the sales building, we purchased another building, so going into that, and also the quality of life improvements, place-making, like we did the park at 8th and Scott, and some like our bike racks, type of small infrastructure, around downtown,” Charos said.

Green, green, and more green, a successful turnout after having a few years off, Irish luck truly came through this afternoon with the weather feeling good to kick off festival season.