MAUMEE, Ohio (WTVG) – The Maumee Summer Fair kicks off Friday night and the Conant Street area is already dealing with some traffic from construction.
Will this busy event make it worse? The mayor of Maumee and event organizers say no.
The main strip of uptown Maumee is under construction to make the sidewalks more pedestrian-friendly and wheelchair accessible. But Mayor Rich Carr said some people have been less than enthusiastic about the inconveniences of the project.
“When I remodeled my house it was horrible for a couple of weeks, you know? But then when it’s done you’re like wow. But you have to get through the difficult times and people sometimes just don’t have the patience for that,” says Mayor Carr.
With the Maumee Summer Fair starting, some people are worried about how the already-congested Conant Street will look, but Mayor Carr said it shouldn’t be a problem.
“Basically our parking is the same. The event has never been on Conant Street, it’s on our side streets so that’s not going to change anything.”
One of the organizers of the event, Ashley Dibling, said that the 100 blocks of Dudley, Wayne, Allen, and Gibbs Streets will be closed for the fair.
“Conant Street’s always open so that makes it easy to get in and out of Maumee, and they can park anywhere on the side streets so there’s lots of parking to just walk up into downtown so I don’t expect that many hard problems getting into town,” said Dibling.
Mayor Carr said they’ll take down some of the cones for the weekend so it won’t look so much like a construction zone. He said that part of the construction could even help the fair crowd.
“No, it’s not going to be different than any other year. We bring in large crowds when we have good weather, and we hope we do, and people have a really good time,” said Carr. “If anything right now with the expansion of the sidewalks it’s going to make it a little easier for families.”
The Maumee Summer Fair is Friday from 5 p.m. until midnight and Saturday from 9 a.m. until midnight.
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