ENTERPRISE, Ala. (WTVY) — Since passing their entertainment district ordinance, the city of Enterprise is seeing huge turnouts at downtown events.

They tell me this year’s crowd for the fall festival was the largest they have seen for the event.

One bar owner says he had between 2,500 and 3,000 people come through his establishment during the event.

After their “Girls Night Out” event at the beginning of the month, downtown Enterprise hosted one of their biggest events of the year with the new entertainment district in effect.

“The entertainment district was absolutely critical to the success of this Fall Festival, everybody was coming in they were able to take their to go cups and walk around,” said Dennis Chastang, Owner, The Social on Main.

Both businesses and city officials have received great response from patrons since the district started.

“The feedback has been phenomenal people just really enjoyed having the entertainment district what it offers as far as the alcoholic beverage being able to you know go from place to place,” said Sonya Wheeler Rich, Enterprise Councilwoman, District 1.

With Saturday’s crowd not exclusively made up of Enterprise residents.

“I bumped into some people from Dothan who said that they hadn’t been to our downtown in years,” Rich continued. “So, they were quite impressed and it mirrored kind of what they’re used to, in their city so people really enjoy it and I think that it’s going to bring value to our downtown in years to come.”

Business owners predict this is just the beginning of what’s to come.

“It’s going to prompt a lot of other businesses to consider coming downtown to Enterprise which is going to increase the variety of businesses that we have down here, adding more restaurants adding more bars adding more nightlife things to do,” Chastang said.

A drastic turn from where the downtown was just years prior to this revitalization.

“To see this downtown come to life and you see that you know just about I mean, I think we have maybe one or two buildings that are vacant on Main Street right now when three years ago you could pick and choose where you wanted to go,” Chastang finished.

Downtown Enterprise’s next major event will be the holiday open house the weekend before Thanksgiving.

Downtown Enterprise is waiting to hear back from Alabama Power on an estimate of the crowd from Saturday.

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