CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Public events in Charleston are being put on hold for at least the next month.
The board of directors for the Charleston Coliseum & Convention Center announced late last week that all events at the facility with more than 250 people are canceled for the next 30 days.
The event supposed to happen this week was the boys high school basketball state tournament. In the middle of the girls tournament last week, the event was suspended. The order put on the Charleston Coliseum & Convention Center (CCCC) puts a dent into plans of getting it rescheduled.
Charleston City Manager Jonathan Storage said there is an outside chance the basketball tournaments may resume, but not in Charleston.
“The governor and Bernie Dolan (SSAC executive director) are looking at options possibly even finding other venues of a smaller location and separating out the tournaments across the state to other venues to have those carry-on,” Storage said.
All other events in that time frame such as the West Virginia Home Show and West Virginia Construction Expo, the board has given more leeway to reschedule.
“The board unanimously voted to give discretion to the executive staff at the facility the ability to give the rights of first refusal for available dates for months in the future, so they will have the first priority to re-book and for those that need to cancel on their own, to waive contractual liquidated damages,” Storage said.
The board also voted to give the executive staff at the Coliseum & Convention Center discretion on how to offer refunds to the public and to those that have booked events, Storage said.
The City of Charleston also announced that all publicly sponsored or city-run events of that size or more are suspended. Storage didn’t rule out the chance of a potential order put out by the city on public events.
“We are still working with our emergency command center and our Metro 911 folks and our county, state and local health officials to make determinations about what our appropriate next steps but we have not reached that tipping point,” he said.