JIFAF traffic being rerouted to avoid Highland congestion
The 10th edition of the Jackson International Food and Arts Festival is coming up on Sept. 21, and the JIFAF committee is ensuring traffic issues that happened last year shouldn’t repeat themselves this year.
“We’re grateful for the City of Jackson for helping us out with this,” said JIFAF coordinator Dr. Sandra Dee. “The City, the Parks and Recreation Department, Jackson Transit Authority – they’re all wonderful in helping us continue this tradition and improve the experience for attendees.”
The festival moved from Downtown Jackson to the Jackson Fairgrounds for the first time in 2023.
An unforeseen result from that was backed up traffic on Highland Avenue because so many people were turning into the Fairgrounds.
“We had 25,000 people come to the festival last year,” Dee said. “And a few people have told me they were going to come, got caught in the traffic and turned around and left and never came in.
“We want to avoid that situation this year.”
The way they’re doing that is that by closing off the Highland Avenue entrance into the Fairgrounds from the southbound traffic.
Northbound traffic coming from the south will be able to turn right into that entrance. But anyone coming from the north will come down either Royal Street in Downtown or James Buchanan Drive and then turn onto Magnolia Street, which borders the Fairgrounds to the north.
There will also be a pair of buses from Jackson Transit Authority who will bring attendees to the Fairgrounds from the Carl Perkins Civic Center.
If the parking lot at the Fairgrounds is full, people can park at the Civic Center, and JTA will drive them down every 15 minutes, starting at 9:30 a.m. – 30 minutes before the festival begins – until 7 p.m. – an hour after it ends.
“Another special thing about Sept. 21 is it’s the International Day of Peace,” Dee said. “So while the world is celebrating that, we’re glad to have our own international celebration that’s full of peace.”
Dee, who helped bring the festival to Jackson 11 years ago along with Eduardo Morales, said the event will be bigger this year and feature different things it hasn’t before including expanded hours from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m.
The expansion is something Dee said festival attendees have requested for a few years, but the need for longer hours was obvious last year – the first year the festival moved from Downtown to the Jackson Fairgrounds.
Another big difference this year will be the free concert that’s happening at the end of the day. An Abba tribute band will be on hand performing.
“Abba was based in Sweden, so I felt like if we were going to do something like this, then including a band not from the United States was a good thing to do,” Dee said.
Lion and Dragon is a group from Houston that’s coming that has been an acrobatic group entertaining at various events from government assemblies to Disney World that will also be performing at different times throughout the day.
This year’s event will also have an expanded children’s area, and The Wow Wagon from The Read Team will be on hand with various international books to promote literacy for children of all nationalities in Jackson.
“When we started this over a decade ago, we just wanted a place to celebrate various heritages that are present here in Jackson,” Dee said. “And Jackson has embraced us with open arms, and we’re so thrilled with how it’s grown.
“We’re looking forward to another fun event this year.”
The committee said the festival still needs a number of volunteers to help facilitate different services in the festival. To do so, log onto the festival’s website to sign up.
Brandon Shields, brandon@jacksonpost.news
