Concepts Being Considered To Welcome Fans Back To Hard Rock Stadium
MIAMI GARDENS (CBSMiami) - Scheduled kick-off for the Miami Dolphins is still four months away, but already the team is tossing around concepts as to how it may be able to welcome fans back to the stadium.
Many wonder how that's going to happen.
"If I come with my family, how are we going to sit six feet apart from each other and the whole distance thing," a fan asked. "It takes away from the whole experience of being a fan, cheering, the noise, and everything like that."
Dolphins and Hard Rock Stadium Vice Chairman and CEO Tom Garfinkel is figuring out how that could look come September.
"We're going to plan for all the different scenarios with the most important priority, obviously, being keeping people safe and healthy," Garfinkel said.
One scenario calls for using every other turnstile to get in, keeping people six feet apart.
Red dots on the ground could shows how fans the proper spacing while in line. Also, people could be given specific times and locations to show up for security.
"We remain optimistic, we're planning for the best in terms of hoping we can play games at the stadium with fans in them and everything else," Garfinkel said.
Garfinkel said instead of welcoming 65,000 fans, capacity could be capped at just 16,000.
When it's time to leave, it could be like leaving a church service, one row at a time. Some fans wonder how that would work.
"Are you going to have every other seat. If you're a season ticket holder, how does that work with your seat," a fan asked.
Getting food would be different too, possibly ordering from your seat then picking it up like you would at a curbside restaurant.
And then there's cleaning.
Hard Rock Stadium is set to become the first public facility to earn the Global Biorisk Advisory Council accreditation for enhanced cleaning and infectious disease prevention.
"We wanted to establish a standard of cleanliness that can make people feel safe when they come to Hard Rock Stadium," Garfinkel said. "We didn't want to establish our own standard, we thought it was important to find a third party, to find experts that have a pre-existing standard that can hold us accountable to that standard."
The Dolphins said all these plans are just concepts right now. They will follow the lead of the NFL and the state to determine how and when they can welcome fans to the stadium.
