Orange tier in sight for counties
San Mateo 1st to move up, increase indoor openings
One year to the day after its last strikes, spares and gutter balls, Bel Mateo Bowl is oiling its 24 lanes — now separated by plastic partitions — and preparing to reopen, after San Mateo County on Tuesday became the first in the Bay Area to advance to the orange tier.
“It’s fantastic!” yelled owner Mike Leong in a phone interview, minutes after learning the county had been moved into a new tier that allowed bowling alleys to open at 25%. “It’s been a devastating, absolutely devastating year.”
The tier changes take effect in San Mateo County on Wednesday. The orange tier is the secondleastrestrictive in the state, and the county was last there in early November.
Most of the orange tier changes involve increasing indoor capacity on businesses that are already open. But indoor pools at hotels and gyms can reopen, along with bowling alleys, cardrooms and family entertainment centers with limited capacity. Breweries can open indoors at 25% capacity.
Bars that do not serve food can reopen outside
— the first time in San Mateo County since last summer. Permanent music or sports venues can open to live outdoor audiences at 20% capacity. They must require reservations and have assigned seating and inseat concessions, and attendees must be local or traveling from within 120 miles.
Bel Mateo Bowl, in the city of San Mateo, closed March 17 last year when most of the Bay Area fell under the first shelterinplace order. More than 30 employees, including the owner, went on unemployment, Leong said. It would have closed for good if not for a GoFundMe fundraiser that collected $80,000.
Leong has owned the bowling alley for eight years. Even while shuttered, he encountered costs to maintain the facility. He estimated his losses exceeded $400,000 and he had to spend $30,000 to purchase protective safety equipment.
Under the new reopening restrictions, he is limiting each lane to four people and plastic partitions will separate bowlers. An air sanitizer will fog the building each night and balls will be sanitized after each use, Leong said.
Employees were already calling him Tuesday afternoon to ask if they could come back to work. “Yes, come on in!” he told them. His regular bowlers also pinged him with calls. “They can’t wait,” he said. “They’ve been chomping at the bit.”
No Bay Area county has been in the orange tier since November, when cases began climbing at the start of the winter surge.
Statewide, daily coronavirus cases are down to levels last seen before the surge. The state’s sevenday average for new cases as of Sunday was 3,357, the lowest since Oct. 21, according to data reviewed by The Chronicle. In the Bay Area, the sevenday average was 502, which is the lowest since Oct. 22. A month later, case counts began to skyrocket during a winter spike fueled by holiday travel and gatherings.
During a school visit in Alameda County on Tuesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom touted California’s low positive test rate, which averaged 1.8% over the past seven days. He said only three other states have a lower positive test rate in the country, and with vaccine supply increasing there is a “bright light at the end of the tunnel.”
California put in place its tier system last August, with four colorcoded levels for reopening: purple, red, orange and yellow, from most restrictive to least. The state is also developing a green tier, but details have not yet been revealed.
The tier assignments are based on a county’s daily coronavirus cases per 100,000 residents and positive test rate. All other Bay Area counties remain in the red tier, though several appear poised to join San Mateo County in orange next week.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed said she expects the city to move to the orange tier on March 24. But she added that San Francisco would probably move at a more conservative pace than the state allows, and not all orange tier activities would resume immediately.
“We want to be careful because as we start to give
people the vaccine, we also know that we’re still in this pandemic. We don’t want to go backwards,” Breed said. She did not provide details as to what restrictions might remain in place.
San Mateo County planned to align with the state’s reopening guidelines, meaning any operations allowed by the state are all clear in the county, public health officials said.
Kenzie Carpenter, marketing manager for Devil’s Canyon Brewing Company in San Carlos, said she was thrilled about moving to the orange tier and allowing the brewery to resume indoor dining.
“I’m definitely excited for it,” she said, adding that the brewery has taken severe financial hits from pandemic restrictions on their operations. “Being able to move into the orange tier makes things a little bit brighter.”
Carpenter said Devil’s Canyon has had to shift and adjust throughout the pandemic to stay afloat. The brewery closed its doors last March 13 and didn’t reopen for anything other than takeout or home delivery for seven months. It was finally allowed to reopen outdoor dining about a month before Halloween — as long as it served a meal with every drink, which was a new challenge.
“It’s been very complicated. We’ve been doing a lot of research and what we can and can’t do,” Carpenter said. “We just had to pivot everything.”
Indoor dining, she said, will makes things easier and should boost their business. “We’re just excited to bring more people here,” she said.
Public health experts across the Bay Area have warned people to remain vigilant through the tapered reopening, especially with the threat of a fourth surge. On Monday, officials in Sonoma County, which had been stuck in the purple tier for more than six months before moving to red over the weekend, urged residents to be cautious as more businesses open.
“Let’s not overdo it with celebrations, especially ahead of St. Patrick’s Day,” said Supervisor Lynda Hopkins during a news conference with political leaders. “The last thing we want to do right now is experience another surge. We don’t want to slip back into purple tier, which would be devastating to so many of our small businesses.”
Matthias Gafni, Aidin Vaziri and Meghan Bobrowsky are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: matthias.gafni@ sfchronicle.com avaziri@ sfchronicle.com meghan.bobrowsky@ sfchronicle.com Twitter: @mgafni @musicSF @MeghanBobrowsky