Moses Lake Spring Festival canceled for second year
Workers assemble the Ferris Wheel for a previous Spring Festival in Moses Lake. This year's event, like last year's has been canceled due to COVID-19.
File photo
MOSES LAKE — The annual Moses Lake Spring Festival this year is canceled, organizers said Monday via social media, due to restrictions imposed to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.
Spring Festival committee member Rob Jones said fellow members were concerned Grant County would still be in Phase 3 of the reopening plan imposed by Gov. Jay Inslee, and those restrictions would be difficult to implement or monitor.
Phase 3 requires attendees to maintain six-foot social distancing, and there are restrictions on crowd size. Spring Festival attendance probably would meet the crowd size restrictions, Jones said, but most festival events are either in McCosh Park or downtown, which don’t have fences or any way to control crowd size.
“How do you monitor that?” Jones said.
A Sunday afternoon concert was scheduled for the McCosh Park stage, and Jones said festival committee members were concerned about controlling access to the area around the stage.
“There’s no way to do that,” Jones said.
Traditionally there’s a carnival on the playfield at Frontier Middle School, but the field would not be available for 2021, and organizers would’ve had to find a new venue, Jones said.
State officials are evaluating coronavirus activity and announcing changes in the restrictions every two weeks. The next update is May 3, and Jones said festival board members wanted to wait until then, but contracts with vendors and performers have a 30-day cancellation clause, and May 3 would be too late to cancel without some financial penalties, he said.