GRAPEVINE, Texas — Data may back up Grapevine’s title of “Christmas Capital of Texas.”
Grapevine has more than 1,400 holiday events over 40 days with everything from holiday lights and drone shows, Grapevine Vintage Railroad’s North Pole Express and more. Now that the holidays are over, though, city officials are looking into data from the 2023 season and how to improve for next year.
Nearly 24,000 were estimated to have visited Main Street from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. Dec. 2 for events, nearly 22,000 from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. Dec. 9, and nearly 34,000 between 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. Dec. 16, market research manager Steven Jones said during a recent city council meeting.
The last six weeks of the year accounted for 16% of all visits to Main Street in 2023, Jones said. About 30% of all holiday visits occurred between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m., he said.
TexRail, a hybrid rail line that operates between downtown Fort Worth and DFW Airport with stations in North Richland Hills and Grapevine, also reported its highest ridership date in 2023 at 1,970 the day Grapevine lit its Christmas tree during its annual Carol of Lights Nov. 20, 2023, Jones added.
As the event has grown, though, so have concerns about traffic and crowd control and safety.
“It was incredibly busy, the data supports that,” Grapevine City Manager Bruno Rumbelow said. “Carol of Lights was as big as it’s ever been, the drone shows added to an already incredibly busy Saturday. It comes with a whole host of challenges when you’re dealing with the numbers that we’re dealing with. We think we’ve dealt with them fairly effectively, but I also think it’s important to kind of keep digging and keep making changes in order to be able to have the advantage that we all want which is robust visitation during that time but also to maybe space it out and to do it in such a way that it is manageable.”
“I think the big concern I had, though, is after it, getting out there were too many people moving or trying to move at one time and if something had happened…some people could have really got hurt if they panicked. We need some pathways, I think, and maybe we need to break the crowd up to exit in segments – do something so they’re not all just pushing to get out at one time,” Grapevine Mayor William Tate said.
Despite some crowd control concerns, Tate said he believed security was good during the event.
Tate also said there were also concerns about not enough food for attendees and lines being too long.
“This is huge I’ve never seen this before,” added city councilman Paul Slechta. “Carol of Lights was a little crazy – just the amount of people that were out there so close to the train tracks … that’s really something I just really want to look at next year. Carol of Lights; the crowds were huge, that train crossing was a big concern.”
Councilman Chris Coy suggested changing the event calendar to help avoid train concerns.
“We know when the trains are coming through, we know the train schedule, so I think it’s a matter of building the schedule for our event around when the trains are going to be coming through, and therefore when the trains aren’t going to be coming through so we can move the people across the railroad track further north for the rest of the festivities that evening."
Planning for the 2024 holiday season will continue with another presentation about potential changes for 2024 at city council expected in the next month and a half.
Among changes already made for the event in recent years are placing staff at railroad crossings, increasing presence of public safety staff within the Christmas Capital of Texas event area, adding fire lanes to side streets for emergency access, and converting on-street parking to pedestrian-friendly barricaded walkways during peak times, said Jones.
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