The show, as they say, must go on. But organizing and hosting events as the coronavirus pandemic presses on is no easy task.
Canceled last year due to COVID-19 restrictions, the Hamilton County Fair in Cincinnati’s Carthage neighborhood is a go in 2021. Organized by the Hamilton County Agricultural Society, the fair is set for August 12-15.
“We are fully anticipating the fair to go on as planned in a ‘new normal’ way,” fair president Kristy Cook tells CityBeat.
While fairs and festivals in Ohio were under severe restrictions or prohibition last year, Gov. Mike DeWine announced earlier this month that regulations for large-scale outdoor events in 2021 largely are no longer in place.
Mass outdoor events now are permitted without capacity limits as long as other basic public health measures — masking, physical distancing, handwashing, etc. — are followed. As part of the new orders, “pods” of 10 or fewer may gather at larger events but should maintain at least six feet of distance from other groups, similar to what sports venues are doing.
But in addition to outdoor spaces, many fairs and festivals, including Hamilton County’s, have activities that take place in enclosed or semi-enclosed structures. Indoor facilities with fixed seating still have to operate at 25% capacity in Ohio, DeWine said.
Figuring out how to organize events while keeping attendees, employees, vendors and volunteers safe is a challenge, especially with health orders that have changed frequently over the course of the pandemic, says Josh Heuser, founder of event experience agency AGAR. Heuser says his team has worked with local governments during the event permitting process to develop comprehensive protocols that comply with health and safety orders and protect workers as well as attendees.
“Depending on the size of the event, it could be as little as 20-30 all the way up to 150-200 people working these events, so the piece that we’re already working on for our own events and experiences are staffing, training manuals and handbooks with detailed COVID protocols,” Heuser tells CityBeat.
AGAR produces some of Cincinnati’s biggest events, including Danger Wheel, Flying Pig and Blink, which is set to return this summer, so Heuser knows quite a bit about dealing with crowds of excited people. He says AGAR considers everything from table spacing to restroom sanitizing to crowd-flow decals, and it’s all a constant learning process.
“Each event or each experience, we’ll take notes, we’ll make adjustments and learn. It’s kind of the cards we’re dealt, so we’ve got to adapt and change,” he says. “The event production industry in Cincinnati, if anything, has become a lot closely tied and close knitted over the last year because everyone’s sharing their learnings and experiences because we all want industry events to come back. If we can all help one another and the local government can help us and learn from us as well, then it’s all truly just about collaboration and how we as an industry work to bring experiences back and safely.”
The Agricultural Society is considering similar steps for the Hamilton County Fair in light of the ongoing pandemic. Cook says that they’ll post permanent signs reminding fairgoers to mask up and properly distance themselves from others, seating in the food areas will be spread out, and employees will monitor spaces to ensure that rules are being followed. The society also will employ additional sanitizing measures in germ-heavy areas such as in restrooms, on rides, in buildings and in seating areas.
“Outdoor areas are a little easier since you have no structure constraints but there is still the spacing to consider and proper placement of such things for handwashing and hand sanitizer stations,” Cook says. “There are always some challenges with this, but we rise to these challenges. A lot of our plans are based on what others have done or in some cases have not done. Large crowds are always a concern, and the fair board with the help of our volunteers will be doing our best to keep crowds spread out and have plans in place if crowds become too much during the fair.”
Many counties are considering how to make their fairs both safe and profitable. Earlier in April, the Ohio Expositions Commission announced that the Ohio State Fair in Columbus is canceled for the public this year, opening only in a very limited capacity to agricultural competition exhibitors and families.
“The important safety protocols that have been put in place to protect Ohioans, like indoor seating capacities, may lead to attendance that is considerably lower than previous years,” Virgil Strickler, Ohio State Fair general manager, said April 8. “The financial ramifications of hosting a typical Ohio State Fair with the same overhead costs, but far less revenue, could be devastating to our organization. In a typical year, the Ohio State Fair’s budget is designed to break even, with a nominal profit, if any. Hosting a full fair this year would likely lead to significant financial loss.”
DeWine said that he’ll ask the Ohio Legislature to allocate federal funds to the Ohio State Fair to help address its financial woes. He also said that all of Ohio’s counties have been given guidance regarding individual county fairs, saying “We anticipate that all county fairs and all independent fairs will be able to have full fairs.”
Locally and throughout the state, fair organizers are pressing onward.
“Although the decision that the state fair will not be open to the public is upsetting to us, this doesn’t influence our decision,” Cook tells CityBeat. “There were many factors involved with the decision the state fair has made. Even though the state fair is not going on as planned, the majority of county fairs will be going on as planned this year.”
But in the end, it’s ultimately up to event-goers to be aware of their surroundings, their tolerance for risk and their actions that can affect other attendees.
“While we take every precaution to keep attendees safe, at the end of the day, it’s up to the individual person as to what they feel comfortable [with] when attending events and what precautions they’re going to take for themselves,” Heuser says. “Our number one priority is protecting those that work for us and work alongside us to create not only a safe environment for them, but for the consumers that come into the spaces. At the end of the day, the onus needs to be a 50-50 give-and-take to the event producers and those that are coming to those events for how they behave and what protocols they follow.”
This article appears in Apr 1-30, 2021.