Hot Springs cancels parade; Spa-Con up in air.

HOT SPRINGS — The rescheduled First Ever 17th Annual World’s Shortest St. Patrick’s Day Parade has been called off, Visit Hot Springs said Tuesday, and the fate of Spa-Con will be decided later this week.

When the parade was originally rescheduled from March 17 to Oct. 17, Visit Hot Springs CEO Steve Arrison said he never would have thought officials would be making the decision to cancel a fall event in mid-July, but as covid-19 cases spike across the nation there is “no way” to safely gather the thousands of people who annually attend the event.

“We think it’s the right thing to do. Looking at the spike in cases going on around the United States, we just thought it was the safe option at this point in time,” Arrison said Tuesday.

Smaller events held indoors would be safe, he said, but larger events, like the parade or the Arkansas State Fair, attract too many people to one area, making it difficult to control social distancing.

“We can control social distancing in the convention center, we can control social distancing in meeting rooms, but it’s very difficult on public streets when you have 30,000-plus people to just ensure that measure of safety that we need right now with the spike that’s going on with the virus,” Arrison said.

When it comes to Spa-Con, a comic and pop culture convention, that is scheduled for Sept. 18-20 in the Hot Springs Convention Center, Arrison said a decision will be made this week, and it will hinge on the special guests who generally travel in for it.

“A lot of them are from California and things like that, and it’s tough to have an event if you’re having difficulty getting your special guests to make it,” he said. “You know, if they can’t come, why have the event? … So I think they’re going to make a decision shortly as to whether Spa-Con is going to go this year or be postponed to next year, as well.

When festive events like the parade are canceled, it hurts not only locals’ morale, but also their pocketbooks because the economy relies on the tourism dollars that these events bring in.

The parade “fills the town up, and we bring a lot of visitors in. Most of them stay more than just the one day of the parade. So yeah, it’s a big economic loss. I really can’t put a number on it,” Arrison said. “But we’re going to have the 18th parade in March next year, so we’re looking forward to that.”

For this year, not holding the parade will same some money, especially on labor, and organizers are hopeful they can get celebrity guests Cheech Marin and Danny Trejo, as well as musical performances by Foghat and Blues Traveller, for the 2021 event.

Typically contracted entertainment is paid about half of their compensation before an event.

But this year “everybody’s been very easy to work with. We’re not losing any money on that,” Arrison said. “What I hope to do is get all of them to perform in March of next year, and we’ll just roll everything forward.”

He added that he hopes the First Ever 18th Annual World’s Shortest St. Patrick’s Day Parade scheduled for March 17, 2021, will be exceptional.

“I never thought we’d be sitting here today saying we couldn’t have the parade in October,” he said. “I just hope and pray that we can clear all this up, and we can go forward in March.”