How will COVID-19 restrictions affect Cambria Christmas Market?
As the holidays approach, rumors have been circulating about whether the Cambria Christmas Market will proceed as usual amid the coronavirus pandemic..
Since 2012, the market has been an expanding German-style festival that features Bavarian food, beverages, Santa Claus, live music, vendor booths and about 2 million lights in dozens of lavish vignettes. The annual event is held on the grounds of the Cambria Pines Lodge and Cambria Nursery and Florist.
The market was featured in 2019 on “The Great American Light Fight” on ABC.
Lodge owner Dirk Winter wrote via email Sept. 4 that this year’s market plans are not yet completely firmed up.
“We have decided that the light display will be considerably smaller and likely limited to just lodge guests,” he wrote. “If the virus restrictions change before the start of the event, we may be able to sell a limited amount of tickets to the general public.”
Whether the market has all the permits and permissions it needs to do that still is unclear.
San Luis Obispo County Supervisor Bruce Gibson said Sept. 5 via phone that the market has a general, multi-year California Coastal Commission permit to operate.
But, he added, “the market also must operate under public health guidelines that come with the (COVID-19) state order that says gatherings of a certain number of people can’t happen, not even outdoors.”
Gibson said that, as far as he knows, the lodge hasn’t been authorized under those guidelines to run a market this year, but may have requested permission to provide “a light display, probably under the clauses that apply to an outdoor museum or an art display ... held outdoors where people can be socially distanced” and health and safety precautions are strictly enforced.
Winter said that “this is the last year of our existing permit” from the commission. “We will need to decide soon about applying for a 2021 permit,” he wrote.
The Cambrian’s requests for details from county health officials about the permit status had not been answered as of Sunday.
However, Gibson’s legislative aide, Blake Fixler, said a letter sent out recently by the county Emergency Operations Center and Public Health Department liaison office said lodge officials had reached out to the EOC to get “approval of their market.”
“They were told that large events are not allowed at this time and that if they wanted to submit a proposal detailing how they would modify the market to fall under state guidelines, they could do so and we could evaluate and make a decision,” Fixler said. “We have not received their plan at this point.”
