Some Okotoks facilities were pleased to see the Province move into Step 2 of its relaunch strategy, but frustration hung in the air for many businesses.
Lara Grunow, director of the Okotoks Public Library, said it will be opening its doors soon with limited capacity of 15 per cent, and will continue online programming. Books will continue to be quarantined for three days after return, and curbside pick-up will still be available.
While it is looking forward to welcoming the community back to the library, she said a little more notice would have helped develop a strategy.
“It’s exciting because we miss seeing our patrons, but a bit more of a heads up would have been nice,” said Grunow. “Since mid-April we have been offering curbside hold pickup to assist patrons with attaining their library items, and the drop-off of used materials has always been available as our 24-7 book-drop was never closed during the nearly year-long pandemic.
“We look forward to welcoming back the community into our community, but want to ensure that we do so in the safest manner as possible.”
Grunow added the Library will have a notice to the public on a re-opening date by the end of the week.
Fitness was the other sector that saw easing of restrictions, announced on March 1 by Premier Jason Kenney, but not as many changes as expected by some.
Andrew Gustafson, owner of Natural High Fitness, agreed more notice would have been appreciated.
He began asking in February what easing restrictions in Step 2 could look like, so he could prepare his two gym facilities for potential re-opening, but received no answer. “It tells me they’re making it up hour by hour, day by day, and that doesn’t lend a lot of confidence,” said Gustafson.
He tried not to have expectations ahead of the March 1 announcement, especially because the wording was that there could be “potential” easing of restrictions on indoor fitness at Step 2.
When the medical community began petitioning for restrictions to stay in place, he said it was inevitable the goalposts for moving into the next stage of relaunch would change.
Gyms are now permitted to invite pre-booked individual and group low-intensity activity such as light weightlifting, yoga, and barre classes. However, heavy weightlifting and cardio exercise are not permitted.
By the time Natural High is able to open to more activity, it will have been closed for at least 15 weeks since December, and for seven of 13 months – with its six months open being under restrictions.
Gustafson said he did open up his facilities to one-on-one personal training as permitted when the Province moved to Step 1 on Feb. 8, but that only accounts for about three per cent of his total business.
“Personal training studios went back to full capacity, fully open,” he said. “We went back to three per cent capacity. So it wasn’t much for us.”
He said the business continues to see losses each month, and is thirsty for memberships.
“That’s what our business model is – people coming in and doing things on their own,” said Gustafson. “And we don’t need a lot of people. We can deal with some restrictions on capacity like we were doing in the summer and fall, but we need freedom to do that.”
The Step 2 announcement was expected to also include eased restrictions for banquet halls, community halls, conference centres, hotels and further easing of indoor fitness and children’s sport and performance. All of those changes were postponed until further notice.
Hospitalization and ICU numbers have dropped down to 257 in hospital with 48 in ICU as of March 1, yet active case numbers and a rise in testing positivity rate and new variant cases in the province were cited as the reason some of the Step 2 measures are not going ahead at this time.
“Alberta is taking a cautious approach as we said that we would when announcing the Path Forward back in January,” Kenney said.
“I know that many Albertans want us to relax many more health measures today, but we cannot and we must not allow exponential growth to start to take hold driven by these new, more contagious variants as we’ve seen in many countries around the world because to do so would end up in weeks jeopardizing our health-care system.
“So we must take a balanced approach and move carefully and safely.”
For more information on the Path Forward go to alberta.ca/enhanced-public-health-measures.
