Holiday weekend downtown walking mall closures okayed by council

While it wasn’t the most entertaining – as in WWF “Cage Match” entertainment – portion of Thursday’s Front Royal Town Council work session (see related story) the discussion and decision to move forward with the closing of portions of East Main and Chester Streets in Historic Downtown Front Royal to vehicular traffic this coming Memorial Day weekend has the most immediate impacts.

A hoped-for immediate impact is a safely social distanced boost to downtown businesses reopening after two months of a pandemic caused closures. However, one thing that won’t be coming to East Main Street this weekend will be cars – as a portion of downtown becomes a walking-mall styled district to facilitate safely distanced outdoor restaurant seating. Royal Examiner File Photos

Those impacts will begin at 2 p.m. Saturday and conclude at 7 a.m. Tuesday morning. They include allowing the area’s multiple restaurants to have outdoor seating to facilitate broader, Governor’s Executive Order 61 Phase One openings, including allowing alcohol to be served with food in prescribed outdoor seating areas. Contacted later, Interim Town Manager Matt Tederick explained that individual restaurants must contact their ABC representative to receive authorization to serve alcohol in the designated outdoor areas over the holiday weekend.

“This is not a festival,” Tederick observed, noting that roaming downtown with alcoholic beverages in hand as during the Wine & Crafts or Blues & Brews Festivals will not be allowed.

However sitting outside, properly socially distanced of course as Tederick indicated the Town would encourage per the Governor’s Executive Order 61, under forecast 70 to 80 degree, partly sunny, partly cloudy weather with good food and something to wash it down within the wake of two months of mandated business closures and stay at home for fun orders, might just work for most.

Tederick also confirmed that Royal Cinemas’ owner Rick Novak will utilize the outdoor summer Town movie night broadcast equipment to play movies and sell concessions outside his Park Theater this weekend, as well.

As for the closure of portions of East Main and Chester Streets, Tederick said the Town parking lots in the Gazebo-Village Commons and Crescent Street areas would be open for parking. East Main Street will be blocked from North Royal to Blue Ridge Avenue, and Chester Street will be closed from East Main to just beyond the Chester Street entrance to the Gazebo-Village Commons parking lot.

It’s been a long time since we saw movie titles on the Royal Cinemas marquee – this weekend we will see outdoor-projected shows with refreshments available from the lobby.

While discussion of the future of joint County-Town Tourism marketing was also part of Thursday night’s agenda, as reported below, there was no reference to specific efforts to draw Northern Virginia/D.C. Metro area citizens still living under “Phase Zero” non-opening restrictions to the Town’s expanded Historic Downtown Memorial Day weekend activities.

Our colleague and local Memorial Day ceremony organizer Malcolm Barr told us those activities will include a paired-back Memorial Day laying of the wreath ceremony Monday at noon, at the Warren County Courthouse lawn. Rather than the normal Dogs of War-referenced ceremony at the Gazebo featuring school bands, citizens and their dogs parading in memory of a nation’s fallen and their loved ones who have sacrificed so much, Barr estimated a brief, perhaps 10-minute ceremony led by Barr’s Husky rescue dog Diva, and wreath placers Mayor Eugene Tewalt and County Board Chair Walter Mabe.

Monday’s Front Royal Memorial Day ceremony will be brief and at the Courthouse lawn, rather than the normal Town Gazebo location

The Memorial Day ceremony in honor of our fallen and their families will be viewable in an exclusive Royal Examiner video; as will the entirety of Thursday’s occasionally volatile Town work session linked to both this and our related story on that volatility surrounding appointments to a County-requested four-person committee on the future of tourism marketing here.

Mayor, Meza spar over committee appointment powers – Mayor by legal TKO