Mother’s Day event will serve as a test
Winter Park gathering may show people’s comfort with crowds
An outdoor Mother’s Day event that begins Friday afternoon on Winter Park’s Park Avenue could serve as the first major indicator of how comfortable people are returning to the crowded festivals once commonplace before the coronavirus pandemic shut down much of Central Florida six weeks ago.
Winter Park will close portions of Park and New England avenues along with Morse Boulevard to traffic so restaurants and shops can use the sidewalks and streets to set up dining tables and merchandise racks in a layout guided by social distancing rules.
Reaction to the event so far illustrates a sharp divide between people who are ready to try to resume a more normal life — and help the small businesses that have been hammered by the stay-at-home orders — and those who say its too soon to mingle again, even from 6 feet away.
Victoria Guirlinger lives in an apartment building along New England and is accustomed to the crowds drawn by Winter Park’s heavy event schedule such as the annual Sidewalk Art Festival.
But she’s likely going to sit this one out, she said, and visit her parents in DeLand instead to avoid being near so many people.
“It’s a little bit uncomfortable because [the event] happened so quickly,” said Guirlinger, a 30-year-old pricing analyst. “I
“We know that the comfort level of the public are very different . ... We are encouraging the public to be respectful of each other’s socially distant space needs.”
Clarissa Howard,
Winter Park spokeswoman
didn’t really have any time to prepare and I don’t feel like I should have to prepare. We’re only in Phase 1 of this and they’re having a street festival, basically.”
Phase 1 of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ plan to reopen the state began Monday, allowing indoor dining at restaurants to resume at 25% capacity along with the same restriction on retail shops deemed non-essential under his earlier stay-at-home order.
City spokeswoman Clarissa Howard said staff will monitor the crowd along with law enforcement to ensure social-distancing rules are being followed such as keeping dining tables and family groups six feet apart. Tents and booths are not allowed and hand sanitizer will be widely available at the event that runs from Friday afternoon to Sunday.
Howard said the city doesn’t anticipate it will be difficult to maintain proper social distancing at the event because there is plenty of outdoor space, especially in 11-acre Central Park along Park Avenue.
“We know that the comfort level of the public are very different – some are very ready to visit a safe place to eat out and do a little outdoor shopping, while others feel safer to eat at home and shop online,” Howard said in an email. “We are encouraging the public to be respectful of each other’s socially distant space needs.”
Winter Park resident Eric Mason, 48, collected about 1,400 signatures for an online petition last month in support of an outdoor event like the one planned this weekend to support local shops.
He said his work as a physical therapist means he’s “acutely aware” of the need for hand-washing and wearing masks. But he’s also confident that if he follows those guidelines — and others do, too — then he’ll be able to stay safe navigating through a crowd.
“People are going to naturally feel too comfortable in some ways. There’s always some folks who don’t kind of get what social distancing is,” he said. “My comfort level is if you sort of follow some basic precautions, you should be OK.”
The Winter Park Farmer’s Market will also reopen on Saturday, but from a different location to allow more spacing between the booths.
The city’s post about the Mother’s Day event on its Facebook page prompted more than 100 comments with many questioning the logistics of being able to enforce social distancing in such a setting.
Residents said they are eager to help businesses recover, but derided the timing of the event.
That fit with the results of a small survey conducted recently for Orange County’s Economic Recovery Task Force, a group appointed by Orange Mayor Jerry Demings to come up with guidelines for reopening businesses.
About 50% of consumers said they were very unlikely or unlikely to dine in a restaurant in the first three weeks of the reopening. And 40% said they planned to remain home even five weeks into the reopening.
“The fear is real,” the survey presentation noted.
Public health officials have warned that even though hospitalizations and the percent of coronavirus tests in Orange County coming back with positive results has dropped significantly, there is still concern about a potential second wave of the pandemic in Central Florida.
Orlando resident Kia Fernandez said the risk of going out and possibly catching the virus from a stranger is too high. She worries she’d pass it to her 55-year-old mother, who has multiple sclerosis. Fernandez said she trusts her ability to practice safety precautions in public, but is not confident that everyone she encounters will be so careful.
The 31-year-old concert promoter is an avid Orlando City Soccer fan and said she misses going to matches. But she won’t be comfortable joining thousands of other fans whenever players take the field again.
“I don’t think it would be possible for me to say, ‘OK, I’m going to go to a soccer game’ and feel 100% confident that I’m going to come back home and 14 days from now still be healthy and keep my family healthy,” she said.
Fernandez said she’s always been conscious of maintaining personal space in crowds but the pandemic has permanently changed the way she’ll interact with others.
“I don’t think I would be able to approach any of my friends the way I that did prior to this,” she said. “Because I have to think of people like my mom, my grandparents, who are old and also high risk.”