The 29th Annual Strawberry Festival in downtown Billings has been canceled.
The event sponsored by the Downtown Billings Alliance was scheduled for Sept. 13, but organizers said Wednesday the COVID-19 pandemic continues to pose too great of a risk.
“Our mission as a non-profit is to act in the best interest of our downtown business community. We do not want to do anything to make a hard situation harder on the currently open downtown businesses or jeopardize their ability to remain open and operational," said Lindsay Richardson, the alliance's events director, in a news release.
"Additionally, Montana remains in stage 2 of the Governor's economic re-opening stages, and stage 2 limits the size of gatherings where physical distancing cannot be maintained throughout. We believe monitoring attendance numbers and physical distancing would be extremely challenging for an event like this. This choice did not come easily however we feel this is the best decision for our downtown community and for the continued efforts to do our part to slow the spread of the virus," Richardson added.
The strawberry festival is typically downtown's first major outdoor event of the summer season. It was originally scheduled for June 6, and organizers had postponed it in the hopes that conditions of the pandemic would improve.
For more information about the DBA and their events, visit downtownbillings.com [downtownbillings.us18.list-manage.com .
