ESTEVAN - Night Markets have come to an end for this summer.
The last gathering at the RBC parking lot took place Aug. 26.
The man behind the event, Josh LeBlanc with the Downtown Business Association, said that overall Night Markets were a success and they hope to bring in more activities of this kind.
"It was a great event for people. Definitely, a huge event for people to come out and see and do something different," LeBlanc said.
Some of the markets had to be cancelled due to the weather conditions, but a lot of them were big hits, especially those in May and June, as they offered the community what people have been lacking for a long time.
"People got their live entertainment, I think that was good. We definitely were able to expose some different types of entertainers from the southeast. The hugest success, I think, is (they were) one of the first events that we were able to have during COVID, where people could actually get out and see each other. People were pretty happy within the first few weeks of those markets. I think that contributed to the success as we've all been in lockdown," LeBlanc explained.
LeBlanc has been getting a lot of feedback from the community, analyzing the successes and challenges, and also understanding what can be done differently in the future. For example, they realized that they did overlap with other markets in the area, which prevented some vendors from participating at all or more consistently.
"People I talked to are extremely happy about it. The May and June markets were much better attended. July and August, we saw some attendance kind of peter out. But again (people went on) holidays, we did have quite a few wind and rain events and cancellations, too," LeBlanc said.
All in all the initiative worked out great and the events served their main goal – to attract more people to downtown Estevan.
"These are the types of things that I think we're going to start looking at doing more often just so we can increase traffic downtown. And as we start downtown revitalization, you'll see more of this type of stuff," LeBlanc said.
He added the Downtown Business Association and business owners are playing with different things and exploring many options for making the downtown experience better, so people can expect a lot of exciting events coming up in the future.
"Our hope is to increase the traffic count downtown. So it's going to take all the business working together to do different events, to improve it and increase traffic counts and make things better."
The Downtown Business Association welcomes any ideas and suggestions from the community.
They might bring the Night Markets back next year, but some things might be changed if that happens.
LeBlanc also thanked everyone involved for putting this event together for the community.
"Thank you to the community, to the City of Estevan, to the Business Improvement District and Downtown Business Association for everyone working together and putting on some events and some different things for people to do around town," LeBlanc said.
