The 111th Northern Lehigh Halloween Parade still plans to be a go this year even as the Main Street bridge that connects Slatington and Walnutport is shut down for deck replacement.

Contacted this morning, Tiffany Rehrig-Schaeffer, a member of the Northern Lehigh Events Committee which sponsors the parade, said there will still be a parade this year.

“We have no intentions of canceling the parade,” said Rehrig-Schaeffer, who also serves as the parade chairwoman. “If need be, we are looking at options to reroute the parade.”

Rehrig-Schaeffer said the route that would make the most sense is to once again start at Victory Park, come down the Main Street hill in Slatington, and then turn at Bechtel’s Pharmacy up to Center Street, where it would disband at the Northern Lehigh School District grounds.

“That seems to be the biggest issue, having a large and safe enough area for everyone to disband,” she said. “We want some place that’s not going to be crowded, is well-lit.”

Rehrig-Schaeffer said the committee has put in a request to the school board if need be to use the grounds for disbanding.

“We’re cautiously optimistic,” she said. “We’ve heard that the bridge is expected to be open by Oct. 20, but until we actually see it open, we want to have a plan B.”

Pennsylvania Department of Transportation spokesman Ron Young said that’s the case.

“The Main Street Bridge is scheduled to be open on or before Oct. 20, as we have been telling people since it closed,” Young said. “After it opens, there will be times when additional work will require lane restrictions, and we will provide updates when they occur.”

Regardless, Rehrig-Schaeffer said the committee felt it best to have an alternative plan in place.

“We’re cautiously optimistic, hoping that it still will be open so we can follow our traditional parade route,” she said. “We really want to have a backup plan if we need to.”

Rehrig-Schaeffer said the committee hopes to make a final decision by the beginning of October as far as what route the parade will take.

“It kind of puts a little bit of a damper on it because it pretty much cuts off one whole part of the community with the bridge being closed,” she said. “This is our 111th year; we really don’t want to cancel the parade either since it has been such a long-standing tradition within the community.”

Rehrig-Schaeffer added, “We don’t want to see it canceled for a year. We just have to kind of make the best of the situation.”

The parade is scheduled to be held at 6 p.m. Oct. 27. The rain date would be 6 p.m. Oct. 28.

Its theme is Witches and Wizards.

In the meantime, Rehrig-Schaeffer encouraged participants to complete their registration forms and have them turned in by Oct. 13.

“There have been some rumors there wasn’t going to be a parade,” she said. “But the parade is still a go for this year.”

After several delays, the Main Street Bridge over the Lehigh River closed last month.

Although the bridge is closed to vehicles, plans have been made so that emergency medical services will still be able to use it.

A Walnutport borough official said last month he believes school buses should be allowed to travel over the Main Street Bridge while it’s shut down for repairs.

Councilman David Stankovic said he believes school buses should be allowed to access the bridge.

Eighteen Northern Lehigh district vehicles, buses, minibuses and vans will have to use the detour through the Lehigh Gap, which will add travel time to each of those runs in the morning and afternoon. Some buses will add more than an hour of travel time, cumulatively, Superintendent Matthew Link said.

But Young said allowing school buses to go over the bridge while repairs are underway was determined to be unsafe.

The closure of the bridge was originally slated for Aug. 7, but that date was pushed back due to the contractor’s schedule.

Its deck has been rated as poor, and the bridge will be replaced with a 48.5-foot-wide, 419-foot-long deck. The deck is originally from 1969.

This section of Main Street has an average daily traffic volume of 10,015 vehicles.

The Main Street Bridge is one of four in the Lehigh Valley being repaired under a $2.5 million contract.

Work on the bridges include repairing steel, decks, beams, bearings, joints and scouring countermeasures for the bridges over waterways.

The general contractor to repair the bridges is H & K Group of Skippack, Montgomery County.

Traffic is being detoured on Route 873 (North Walnut Street), Route 145 (Riverview Drive/North Best Avenue), and Route 248 (POW/MIA Remembrance Highway).

Pedestrian access is being maintained on the bridge during the deck replacement.