The New Normal
By Jenn Fields
Those who work on Day 0 at the Show contribute to a magical overnight transformation. The day before the doors open to the industry, cranes dot the interior skyline of the Colorado Convention Center, forklifts buzz pathways choked with cardboard and packing crates, and on the ground, each booth’s team turns it all into a pitch-perfect marketing moment for the company by the next morning.
Convention centers are designed for big transformations, but the change happening right now at the building the big blue bear peers into is monumental. The Army Corps of Engineers is managing construction of a temporary medical shelter for COVID-19 patents on the convention center floor that is scheduled to be able to offer local hospitals an overflow space of 600 rooms by May 15.
The first 600 makeshift rooms with beds is just half of what the corps is building for this multimillion-dollar project.
“The initial plan was to build out 2,000 beds, so we will be converting a large portion of the facility to those individual rooms,” said Micki Trost, public information officer for Colorado’s state emergency operations center. “The cost of construction was initially projected to be $40 million. Since we’ve reduced the scope, it’s now $25 million, and that’ll give us 1,200 beds.”
The state has contracts in place for staffing, equipment, and pharmaceuticals, as well as a fleet of ambulances to transport patients from hospitals to the convention center, and a dispatch center. “People cannot show up at the convention center,” Trost said. “They need to go to a hospital, and if the hospital has reached its capacity for ICU patients, they let us know and we will have them transported.”
When opened for COVID-19 patients who are on the road to recovery but still need hospital care, the facility will staff one nurse for every 20 patients.
During a press walk-through in early April, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis told reporters, “We are buying the time we need by staying at home to build this capacity.”
A Long Summer?
Elsewhere in the Show’s home state, owners and employees of outdoor industry businesses are trying to figure out what potentially reopening this summer will look like.
To get a handle on how Colorado’s outdoor industry was doing under the governor’s stay-at-home orders in early April, the state’s Outdoor Recreation Industry Office asked businesses to complete an anonymous impact survey. The results painted a bleak economic picture: Three out of four businesses surveyed had suspended some or all of their operations, half of the businesses had reduced employee hours, and 41%of businesses reported that they would not survive more than three months without assistance. On average, respondents’ businesses saw revenues cut in half by the pandemic.
The impact survey helped identify the most vulnerable businesses, said Nathan Fey, director of Colorado’s Outdoor Recreation Industry Office. “I would say it’s the retail shops and the guide services,” Fey said. (The latter is heavily represented in the survey—guide and instruction services comprised 28% of respondents.) “The smaller retailers have been hit particularly hard, especially if they don’t deal with firearms.”
Still, the results of the impact survey showed some good surprises. “What we’ve learned is that there are a handful of businesses that adhere to some pretty strict financial practices and set themselves up with a pretty big rainy day fund,” Fey said. “They were well positioned; they weren’t worried about having to shut down in the next month or next three months. So it’s not them that we’re worried about—it’s the ones that don’t have a cushion.”
All of the manufacturers his office has heard from have received funds from the Small Business Association’s Paycheck Protection Program, as have many of the retailers and guide services, Fey said. However, he said, some respondents said they couldn’t stay open another month without help. “So we’re following up with them to see if they’ve gotten PPP or if they’ve applied for an Economic Injury Disaster Loan.”
Nonprofits represent another large segment of respondents to the impact survey, and this, along with reports from the ground, is causing concern for conservation efforts. “We’ve already seen some impacts to public land from having facilities closed: toilet paper in forests, people are not following what we all assume are the best practices for Leave No Trace. The office is working with state and federal leaders on solving some of these issues, he said. “We’ve also been really pushing our federal partners on something that looks like a conservation corps,” Fey said. This could help address stewardship issues, as well as concerns about impacts on wildlife and trails—and provide jobs. “And certainly putting people back to work outside is crucial to physical and mental health.”
Though each state’s recreation opportunities vary, Fey said there’s a common thread in meetings and conversations with his counterparts around the U.S. “We’re all facing the same issues. It’s when do we reopen, how do we reopen, maintenance backlogs, issues with ignoring closure orders, traveling outside of close-to-home, and how that’s impacting gateway and rural communities.”
The New Innovation
Looking forward into summer and beyond, there’s a push-pull in reopening those gateway communities, which need the economic boost tourists provide but also don’t have the hospital capacity to handle a localized outbreak of COVID-19. Amid that tension, the urge to protect locals won out in Moab, Utah, and Colorado’s Gunnison County—home to Crested Butte—where local governments rolled up the welcome mat and enacted orders that were the equivalent of “no visitors allowed” signs in March.
In anticipation of the summer travel season, the Colorado Tourism Office is working on several education campaigns, for service workers (restaurants, breweries, and craft distillers are all part of the tourism experience in outdoors hot spots), and for locals and visitors alike. “We have an initiative we’re calling Resident Receptiveness,” said Cathy Ritter, director of CTO. “It really is around educating residents and visitors about these new practices so communities can feel comfortable welcoming visitors into their midst, and so visitors can feel comfortable.” The guidance in these campaigns is still under discussion. “There might be wearing of masks, there might be social distancing, we might be lifting up air high-fives,” she said. “I think we’re all going to have to navigate our way into this new normal.”
The U.S. Travel Association has been tracking travel spending across the country, and for the week that ended on April 18, it was down 89%over the same week last year. “We’ve been tracking the national trend closely,” Ritter said. “In other states, like Hawaii, it’s down 95%.” There’s evidence that week represents the trough of the downturn, she said.
However, “There’s a lot of research at the national level that the safest way travelers believe they can transport themselves, by far, is by car,” she said. Ritter and her peers suspect they’ll see a lot of families road-tripping into remote areas this summer, either by car or RV, so they can get out and enjoy nature. “We are definitely hearing there’s a keen interest in exploring the outdoors, especially after being cooped up inside.”
Some parts of summer fun look trickier to replicate this year, though. Whitewater rafting outfitters face some particular hurdles in the era of contagion: How do you transport people to and from the river and load them into a boat while social distancing? How do you clean all of the gear clients share from trip to trip?
Even after they’ve answered those questions, the whitewater industry will be even harder hit if people aren’t traveling, she said. “In Colorado, 75%of their clientele is out-of-state visitors, and the other 25% tend to be Colorado residents who are entertaining friends and family from out of state,” Ritter said. “So they’re very reliant on tourism.”
“And that’s just one industry,” she added. “You start thinking about all of the different facets—museums, hot springs—they each present their own set of challenges.”
In the meantime, the tourism office is working on procedures for keeping people safe at their welcome centers, too. “In the past, we trained our volunteers on fun things to do in Colorado,” Ritter said. “Now we’ll be training them on infectious disease control.”
As we head into the summer, everyone will have to be responsible—and creative. For the outdoor industry, the latter will come naturally, Fey said. “Our industry as a whole is really innovative and thinking outside the box for solutions, and I have hope that we’ll be able to navigate this.”
Fey is also hopeful about stewardship of our beloved outdoor spaces just based on what he’s seeing in his own neighborhood. “I see people walking more, I see people being more intentional, waving, saying hi more, picking up trash around the neighborhood.” People are investing in the limited outdoor spaces they have during the shutdown. “My hope really is that this new ethic will be stronger going forward. Are we going to be taking care of our public lands and the places we play? Maybe this was an eye opener for everyone.”