AKRON, Ohio — Every summer, the outdoor venue Lock 3 in Akron is home to some of the city's largest events, concerts and festivals. However, with the spread of COVID-19, dozens of events are now canceled.

• Akron has already canceled all of their large events, concerts and festivals at their Lock 3 outdoor venue
• The city is looking at adding safe ways to provide drive-in movie nights for guests
• They're working on hosting multiple 4th of July fireworks shows in several neighborhoods
  

"We just didn't feel that it was prudent from a public health perspective to be in the business of large group festivals and gatherings and concerts as a city," said James Hardy, deputy mayor for Integrated Development, City of Akron.

Hardy says cancelng the events will take a toll on the city's tourism industry. Restaurants and hotels will no longer benefit from the influx of visitors.

"The hit to the city is pretty much a wash, we're not in the business of making money out of our concert venues or our community centers or our programming, but without a doubt it's gonna have a ripple effect throughout the rest of the economy. It draws thousands and thousands and thousands of people downtown everywhere, those people inevitably stop at a restaurant, those will not be happening unfortunately this year," Hardy said.

One of the most popular events canceled is the city's Italian-American Festival. Festival Chairman Harry Ciccolini says it's been a tradition in Akron for the last 73 years.

"It is a blow to the community, it is a blow to our vendors, because we have vendors who have supported us and I feel really bad for a lot of these vendors whose livelihood is festivals. Our game plan is to have a festival in 2021, regain our tradition and hopefully make it even better," said Ciccolini.

The state will slowly reopen starting Friday, but the governor still has an order in place limiting gatherings to 10 people or less.

Hardy says even if those restrictions are lifted, resurrecting the events will likely not happen. The city is now working on alternative events to bring the community together while still socially distancing.

"A couple of things we're looking at are the potential to host pop-up drive-in movies across the city where people can stay in their car, we can provide perhaps curbside service with food trucks. We're looking at a unique way of still celebrating the 4th of July, and the feasibility of hosting multiple smaller neighborhood fireworks shows where people can socially distance and do it northeast, southwest and downtown," said Hardy.