"Mounting that size and scale of a festival in a pandemic, following weeks of rain and flooding from Ida, felt impossible," Walker said. View Gallery: 2021 Montclair Jazz Festival Downtown Jamboree Bloomfield Avenue was filled, not with cars, trucks and buses, but people-mingling, eating, drinking, dancing and listening to a hundred world-class jazz musicians on four stages. The Montclair Jazz Festival's first "Downtown Jamboree" brought an estimated 25,000 festival-goers to the business district. On Saturday, against the odds, Walker's dream came true. Even during the height of the pandemic, the town initially resisted shutting down tiny Church Street to allow for socially distanced shopping and dining. The kicker? She wanted to close down a half-mile of busy Bloomfield Avenue, a county road and the town's main artery, from North Fullerton to Lackawanna Plaza, all day, which had never been done before.
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She'd have a series of summer concerts at Lackawanna Plaza, followed by an all-day festival in September. Once again, Walker pivoted, setting her sights on a location she'd long dreamed about, where people could move about and businesses could benefit: the streets of downtown. Cramming tens of thousands into Nishuane Park, where the festival was born 13 years ago as an outdoor recital space for students, was not going to fly. While she was planning this spring, the Delta variant was raging and only small gatherings were permitted. This year, it looked to be more of the same. There was 107-degree heat in 2016 a flood that washed out the 2018 festival, and then the pandemic, which nixed the 2020 event. Melissa Walker, the founder and director of the Montclair Jazz Festival, and the nonprofit Jazz House Kids, has had more than her share of setbacks. Watch Video: VIDEO: Montclair Jazz Festival 2021, Downtown Jamboree