For example, the East Montgomery County Improvement District announced on March 30 that it is postponing its annual East Texas Fire & Ice festival, which was originally scheduled to take place on May 2, until May 30.
The event will still take place at Big Rivers Waterpark & Adventures, according to the news release. It will feature ice sleds, fire performances, carnival rides and a firework show.
"As we got closer to the date, the county and state issued stay-at-home orders, and Sunday, President [Donald] Trump extended social distancing guidelines to April 30," aid Frank McCrady, president and CEO of EMCID, in the released statement. "We felt it would be responsible to delay the event another four weeks."
On March 12, the EMCID also canceled its inaugural Eggcellent Event, which was an Easter event scheduled for April 4.
Meanwhile, the city of Humble announced in mid-March that it would cancel its 40th annual Good Oil Days, which was scheduled to take place April 2-4 and had 117 vendors signed up to participate. The event, which celebrates Humble’s history in the oil industry, was going to feature a sip-and-stroll, a street dance, and a street festival.
"We didn't want to put the public at risk, [and] we didn't want to move forward and have a failed festival," said Jennifer Wooden, director of the Humble Civic Center. "With this being the 40th year—which is supposed to be a really, really big event—we thought we'd put all those efforts on hold and roll them over into the efforts for next year."
The city also canceled 35 events at the Humble Civic Center between March 12 and April 5, Wooden said. She said the city had to refund $98,000 worth of events, including the Houston Barbecue Festival and private events, such as birthday parties, festivals and weddings.
Although the cancellation of events may be challenging for local businesses, Wooden said the city of Humble has plans for new events after the virus is over that will attract tourism to Humble.
"Once things calm down, we will ramp up lots of efforts toward revitalization and bringing more events downtown and to the city of Humble," Wooden said. "We will be rolling out those announcements once things calm down."
