There are two possible futures for Kelowna's OK Corral. Either it reopens soon or it never reopens at all.
"Cowboy Al" Steadman speaks for the OK Corral, and like a good cowboy, he gives it to you straight. He's trying to keep it positive, but when asked how long the business can survive without any cash flow, it gets difficult. "Not long," he admits.
The Corral has been a mecca for the country crowd and others for 35 years, and the ownership of the storied saloon isn't ready to walk away. Not just yet.
"We want customers and customers want us," said "Cowboy Al", in an interview at the Corral with KelownaNow. "And we do have the capabilities here of changing stuff around."
They've come up with a plan to let allow their clientele to spill into the parking lot beside the corral, so people can enjoy themselves while maintaining physical distancing.
"We have a big building here and we have the room," he argues. But the Corral finds itself in the nightclub category of the province's restart plan with no reopening date in sight.
"It would look just like a bigger patio," explained Steadman, describing the new suggested layout.
"We can run this cabaret like a pub-style place and we can have food trucks outside so there's food available for everybody, and we have the capability of doing that."
What the Corral's ownership doesn't want to do is fold the way Gabby's Country Cabaret in Langley did, less than two weeks ago.
"What we don't want to lose is 35 years of a lot of hard work and customers that have really really loved to come to the corral."
The Corral's ownership has reached out to the provincial government to consider their situation. Just how long they can last without some kind of reconsideration, they won't exactly say.
"Not long," he said. "It just would be to that point. We just gotta get going and I think that we can handle it the same way that all of these other bars and pubs have done it and I think we can do it and maybe even a little bit better and we can keep country music alive."
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