It’s good news for those people planning an event. June 1 marks the opening of banquet and catering halls throughout Ohio. Much like the rest of the businesses that have opened, they are tasked with abiding by safety regulations to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
At least for the Veteran’s Memorial Civic and Convention Center, they are ready to go. Staff feels like the safety protocols are adequately in use. They are rescheduling those canceled events and taking new reservations.
"We know as a civic center we’re extremely important for this region," Abe Ambroza said, CEO of the convention center. "Whether it’s—just the fact that it’s an important venue because of its size. But also we know what we can do to help this economy really get going again by starting to bring people in from outside our region and into Lima that are going to start spending some money at local businesses."
Along with their banquet halls the civic and convention center still has concerts scheduled for later in the year. But the state guidelines and customer confidence will dictate if those go on.
"We got a group of people that are very confident, ready to come back," said Ambroza. "You’ve got another group of people that are ready to come back for sure, but they want to kind of see how things are going to work. Then you’ve got another group that’s—they’re going to wait a while and see how things go."
People will be waiting for other venues to open, such as the UNOH Event Center. The supervisor says they are taking their time to go through the health guidelines, devise a plan and train the staff on new rules.
"We just want to make sure when we reopen that everybody is safe and we got all of our ducks in a row," said Adam Spiers, supervisor of the event center. "And then we can move forward and enjoy these events."
The new guidelines has pushed the event center into hiring more employees.
"So it is very difficult to set these plans up and train staff on these things," Spiers said. "And also, offer these to our clients, saying you have to do this and you have to do this."
The reopening will have to be approved by the UNOH cabinet and board of trustees. There is no target date to open.
