Like many events with large public gatherings, the Philadelphia Flower Show will be undergoing some changes in the coming year to maximize the safety of visitors, but the move will have some advantages, including more space in which to roam around.
"I'm really excited about this big change that we definitely had to make, but I'm excited about all the great things we're planning," said Pennsylvania Horticultural Society Chief of Shows and Events Sam Lemheney.
The show has been held for 192 years, but this will be the first time since the 1960s Lemheney said the show will lead into summer instead of spring, and the first time since 1996 it won't be held at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, instead opting for an outdoor--and significantly larger--FDR Park.
"First and foremost, we want to make sure we're producing a show that keeps all of our visitors safe. That's the number one priority and the filter that we put everything through when we're planning and coming up with ideas," he said. "Making sure that there's enough space to be socially distance, that's one of the reasons why we chose this location. It has a much bigger footprint than we're used to at the convention center; It's over 15 acres versus about 10."
Lemheney said they'll also be limiting access to the attraction with timed tickets, and morning and afternoon availability. There will also be cleaning and hand-washing stations while most produced content will be low-touch to follow "all the guidelines that the CDC and the state and the city are putting out." Contactors in the medical and security fields are also being tapped to maximize safety.
While FDR Park is large, at more than 40 acres, Lemheney said the show wouldn't interfere with other activities going on in other sections of the park, so the public would still have access to things like the sports fields, but it also meant the flower show would be one of the largest ever.
"We certainly didn't need to find more flowers. We have access to a lot of flowers and we're lucky that we have a great network of growers and folks that will be designing our gardens, and they will be there will be a lot of them. So we're excited about that," he said. "The biggest challenge that we've had is less about the content, because we have so many great participants and people that participate...it was more about the infrastructure and making sure that we have all the things that we probably take for granted inside the convention center. Electric is pretty much anywhere you wanted, it can come out of the floor, and the electricians are great about pulling that out in for us and getting us what we needed. Water's the same way."
Having done something for so long and having to change it all up so quickly presented the most difficult challenges for organizers used to a different space he said, but they adapted quickly.
"I've been working on the show for 17 years and the show has been in the Convention Center since '96," Lemheney said. "So that different muscle memory of doing an outdoor show versus an indoor show has been probably our biggest challenge. But we have a great team and a great staff that has really looking into those details."
That turnaround was maybe the most impressive move of all, Lemheney said, considering they made the decision to host the Philadelphia Flower Show at FDR Park and bang out the details in about a quarter of the time it takes to usually plan the event.
"We typically take about 18 months to two years to plan a flower show, so we actually have a lot less time to plan this show because we had to pivot so late in the game," he said. "We didn't really make the decision that we were moving, or that we needed to change, probably until May of this past year. So we're planning an entirely brand new show within a year, that typically takes about 18 months to plan. That's been our biggest challenge."
But the show is important to those who love it, and it's the organization's biggest fundraiser of the year, so Lemheney said it was important for them to find a safe way to put the show on for both attendees and organizers.
"This flower show is a tradition in Philadelphia, and for so many people, they look forward to this as a rite of passage and really sort of the intro to spring," he said. "We did change the dates to early summer, so we're hoping that this is the the entrance into summer, into the gardening season...the Horticultural Society does so much great work out in the city helping to improve the health and wellbeing of individuals by using horticulture. This is our biggest fundraiser. We wanted to make sure that this continued and it continued to raise the funds so that we could still do the great work that we do out in the city."
For tickets and more information, visit PHSOnline.org.
The Link LonkDecember 11, 2020 at 07:00PM
https://www.wdel.com/news/philadelphia-flower-show-makes-a-move-to-a-larger-safer-space-for-2021/article_a1edd6d4-3b29-11eb-a94b-7b586eaee016.html
Philadelphia Flower Show makes a move to a larger, safer space for 2021 - WDEL 1150AM
https://news.google.com/search?q=Flower&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
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