Street Closure in Clayton for Rural American Pride Festival

The City of Clayton is preparing for a large crowd of visitors this weekend for the Rural American Pride Festival.  The city is anticipating up to 500 festival attendees for late Friday and all day Saturday. Clayton Police Chief Andy Strait gives details about the festival.  “This is a Rural American Pride Festival and Antwaun Stevens is hosting this event and it is basically bringing festival-goers in and what I have heard from him, he expects around 400-500 people.  Of course, we never know how many will show up. But this is a good thing for Clayton’s downtown business area as people will be shopping and having a get together on Saturday around the pavilion area.  So, this will be a big event for us to bring more people into Clayton and let them see how great our community is.” Hiawassee Street will be closed for the festival, continues Chief Strait. “We will be shutting down Hiawassee Street from Highway 76 by the library to the four-way stop at Church Street.  This will be from 11am to 11pm. We will allow for emergency vehicles only and hopefully, that will keep the pedestrian flow a lot safer from town to the pavilion area, so that is the reason we are doing that. That will be the only street closure. We are expecting some heavy congestion pedestrian wise on Friday afternoon around school time, so we ask people to maybe leave a little earlier to get to where they are going.  Around the Main Street red light that is where we are expecting some pedestrian crossings there, so that might slow traffic a little bit with the evening community. But, other than that, we shouldn’t have any major problems with traffic.” Despite earlier plans, there will be no fireworks or concert on Saturday at the pavilion area. Once again, motorists are reminded that Saturday night in the downtown area Hiawassee Street from the four-way stop at Church Street to Main Street will be closed. Traffic will still be able to cross the intersection of Church Street. The second portion of Hiawassee Street from 6pm until midnight will be closed to allow for the overflow of pedestrians from the restaurants. This will keep the congestion off of Main Street and allow for a safer flow of vehicle and pedestrian traffic.