GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Michigan’s largest St. Patrick’s Day street party – Irish on Ionia – returned to downtown Grand Rapids Saturday for its 11th year.
“We’ve had a great turnout…We sold about 10,000 tickets,” BarFly Marketing Director Elise Mastio said.
The festival included live music and DJs, dance and street performances, food trucks and, of course, lots of beer.
But the beer wasn’t the only part of Irish on Ionia going green this year – it was a zero-waste event.
“We’ve got a sustainability group here onsite helping us with our composting and our recycling, and we work really hard to keep it clean and manage that appropriately,” Mastio explained.
Organizers made some other changes, too, based on feedback from previous years.
“People would complain about the drink tickets and some of the lines, so we’ve been making improvements with our technology. We obviously use digital tickets to try and get people in faster. And this year, we’re cashless. So, it’s all tap to pay for drinks, and we’re testing out some RFID bracelets, which has been really fun to see people react to that tap to pay on their wrist,” Mastio added.
Matthew Jackson, who recently moved to Grand Rapids, attended Irish on Ionia for the first time Saturday.
“I love it here. This is absolutely great,” Jackson told FOX 17. “I heard about it on Instagram. I heard it was great. I heard it was such a great time to come to, and just the fact that it goes all day means you can come whenever you want.”
Irish on Ionia started at 10 a.m. Saturday and ran until 9 p.m.
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