Horry County Fair bucking national trend, set for July 3 despite coronavirus concerns
The fifth annual Horry County Fair is set to open this weekend, in stark contrast to most other fairs around the country that have been canceled or postponed due to coronavirus.
The 10-day fair, held at Myrtle Beach Speedway, was originally scheduled April 24-May 3, but organizers postponed it until July 3-12 after restrictions were put into place by S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Steve Zacharias, general manager of the 45-acre venue, said special precautions will be in place, including intense cleaning of all rides after each use, hand sanitizer stations set up throughout the area and altering the layout to discourage large gatherings and allow for proper social distancing.
The petting zoo that’s typically offered at the fair will not be available this year, he added.
Fair staff will wear face coverings, which will be recommended but not required for attendees, Zacharias said, adding that people will need to take personal responsibility to ensure social distancing.
The City of Myrtle Beach is scheduled to consider a mandatory face mask order Thursday, but the speedway is located in unincorporated Horry County, and county council hasn’t announced any plans to consider a similar order.
Zacharias told The Sun News that organizers never considered canceling the fair. Though he told the Horry County Zoning Appeals Board during its June 8 meeting they weren’t sure the fair was going to happen until recently speaking with representatives from Strates Shows, the Orlando, Florida-based company that runs the fair.
“They’ve been fearful,” Zacharias told the board, “and they’ve dragged their feet, didn’t want to pull the trigger because of (COVID-19) and be the first one to do it until they felt comfortable with how they were going to handle it.”
Other fairs canceled
The Horry County Fair will be Strates Shows’ first event since at least mid-March, according to the company’s events calendar, which shows all its other fairs either canceled or postponed.
Jim Strates, a co-owner and operations manager, said a lot of the fairs that were canceled are in states with more strict guidelines, and those decisions were made due to uncertainty about when activities would be allowed to resume.
Fairs that Strates Shows was supposed to run that have been canceled include: the Seminole County Fair in Sanford, Florida; Firefighters’ Indian County Fair in Indian River County, Florida; and The York Fair, which has been held in York, Pennsylvania every year since 1918, when it was canceled due to the Spanish Flu pandemic, according to The York Dispatch.
The Coastal Carolina Fair, scheduled for October 29-November 8 near the Charleston area, was also recently canceled due to COVID-19.
Strates expressed concern about a lack of people wearing face masks in the Horry County area, but said all his employees will wear them, and they have the ability to isolate employees if any begin showing symptoms.
“We’re going to take a crack at this thing,” he said. “I don’t think we have any other choice.”
One of the Horry County Zoning Appeals board members asked Zacharias whether the fair could be held at a later date, but he responded that it could not, pointing out that the speedway is in the process of being sold and rezoned.
The zoning appeals board voted unanimously to approve the speedway’s request for a special exception to change the date of the fair.
Since that approval on June 8, S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control data shows more than 2,300 new coronavirus cases have been confirmed in Horry County.
This story was originally published June 30, 2020 at 10:11 AM.
