BELMAR - You know your event is a success when police have to stop allowing people into town because so many people want to come to it.

That's what happened last year when Belmar officials had to shut down the borough to incoming traffic during the popular annual New Jersey Seafood Festival, one of the oldest and most popular festivals of its kind in the nation.

Thousands gathered on the on Sunday, June 14, 2015, for the final day of the New Jersey Seafood Festival in Belmar. (Alex Napoliello | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com).

On the final day of the 2015 festival - which attracted more than 200,000 visitors over the course of three days in mid-June last year - Mayor Matt Doherty had to make the decision, due to public safety concerns, to shut down all traffic into the town for approximately four hours after the small beach town "reached its capacity."

The 1.6-square-mile borough has an estimated population of only about 6,000 people, but that number swells to more than 60,000 in the summer.

Doherty said last year's seafood festival - coupled with terrific beach weather - created a "perfect storm of good things" that raised population beyond manageable levels.

"Our small town can only accommodate so many cars on our roads," he told NJ Advance Media at the time. "We were at capacity."

However, borough officials took steps to avoid similar issues for this year's 30th Annual New Jersey Seafood Festival, the biggest of which was rescheduling the popular annual festival from mid-June to mid-May.

"Our seafood festival was so heavily attended that the crowds just got too large for our town to handle, so this year we moved it up to before Memorial Day weekend," Doherty said. "We don't need a large event to draw people to Belmar during the summer, because as long as the weather is nice our beaches will always draw people. So we moved our seafood festival to a time of year when we typically don't get as many visitors and when it isn't quite 'beach season' yet."

The New Jersey Seafood Festival will be held at Silver Lake Park this weekend, starting with a "locals night" from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Friday night. The festival is then scheduled to run from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturday and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sunday.

Event organizers say this year's event would feature new activities and attractions, as well as live music, a wine and craft beer tent, contests and activities for kids.

However, the most important attraction will be the more than three dozen food vendors who are expected to be in attendance.

"We are expecting this to be another amazing seafood festival for us," Doherty said. "We haven't scaled anything back, we're still going to have the same amount of food vendors and other activities. We just moved it up a few weeks to make it an easier event to get to, which will hopefully make it a more enjoyable experience for the folks who are here."

Free parking will be available at the municipal parking lot at 5th Avenue and River Road, the Belmar Marina on 10th Avenue and Route 35, or at Dempsey Park on 16th Avenue. Free shuttles will run through Belmar continuously during the event hours on Saturday and Sunday, with stops at the Marina, the Belmar train station, delivering visitors to the end of Silver Lake at 5th Avenue.

Rob Spahr may be reached at rspahr@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @TheRobSpahr. Find NJ.com on Facebook.