“In the Southern Part of Heaven, the party’s over at 11” is the theme for this year’s heralded Halloween festivities in Chapel Hill.

In an attempt to make Homegrown Halloween on Franklin Street a more family friendly event, the Town of Chapel Hill will be closing the street from 8:30 until 11 o’clock on Halloween night this year.

In previous years the road was opened again at midnight, but Lt. Josh Mecimore said he doesn’t expect the change to impact the festivities.

“I don’t think there will be any huge changes compared to years since 2008 when we started doing the Homegrown Halloween,” Mecimore says. “The major difference this year is that we’re opening the streets up a little earlier.”

Mecimore said before 2008 the large crowds that came to Chapel Hill were a safety concern.

“We saw those crowds peak at about 80,000,” Mecimore says, “and then the town decided that something needed to change because there are a lot of safety concerns with having 80,000 people in that small of an area. If something happened and things didn’t go well, then a lot of people could get hurt.

“That’s when the concept of this Homegrown Halloween was started.”

In the years following the introduction of Homegrown Halloween, the number of people attending and the number of alcohol related incidents had decreased, until last year when Halloween was on a Friday night.

“We had a couple of years where the number of incidents involving alcohol-related illnesses had gone down,” Mecimore says. “That went back up last year. Unfortunately, because this is on a Saturday, I think there’s some concern that that might continue to go up or stay up where it was last year. We want to make sure that that doesn’t happen.

“[Police will] work hard to keep alcohol from coming into the event from outside.”

He said the safety measures used in years past will continue for Saturday’s event.

“We’ll have the same kind of checkpoints that we’ve had in the past, where we’re checking bags, checking for alcohol, weapons,” Mecimore says. “Simulated weapons are not allowed. Alcohol of any kind is not allowed to be brought in.”

Mecimore adds, while many bars will be open throughout the event, safe consumption is a major point of emphasis for authorities.

“We want to do things that encourage people to consume alcohol responsibly and act responsibly,” he says, “so that hopefully we have a very safe event like we have in years past.”

More information from the Town of Chapel Hill is available here.

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