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SAUGUS — Roller World on Route 1 in Saugus was shut down Sunday night as photos and videos of people crowded together in large groups at the popular spot circulated on the internet.
The Saugus Board of Health was told about the social media posts and visited the premises, shutting it down around 6:30 p.m. A police detail was present to make sure everyone vacated in an orderly fashion.
“We observed a good amount of people in there on Sunday night,” Saugus Health Director John Fralick said. “There was a counter at the door and we clocked them at having about 340 people in the establishment when we were down there.”
Roller World has been closed for almost a year because it falls under one of the last phases of the state’s reopening plan. Indoor theaters and performance venues, roller skating rinks, trampoline parks, and other indoor recreation businesses are in the second step of Phase 3 and were granted permission by Gov. Charlie Baker to reopen on Monday. However, reports circulated online that Roller World opened a day earlier.
Roller World, which first opened in 1981, has an occupancy permit of 1,000 people.
The restrictions in place for Step 2 Phase 3 states that establishments can open at 50 percent capacity, but the town of Saugus feels that 500 people is still unsafe, thus restricting overall maximum capacity to 200.
According to Fralick, the health department gave Roller World a list of restrictions for reopening after Sunday’s incident, including a 200-person maximum capacity limit and mandated online booking, to avoid similar incidents in the future.
Fralick said the business aims to resume operations Friday, pending the online booking rollout.
He added that Roller World was legally allowed to open as of Monday but will be taking a few days to ensure that the online booking system works and is reliable.
Citations for COVID-19 orders, coming from Baker’s office, state that the first offense is a verbal warning, the second is a written warning and the third can be a monetary citation.
“We’re just looking to put them on a short leash,” Fralick said. “We’re going to let them know that any future infractions are going to cause a summons before the Board of Health to talk about the ongoing citations and infractions. If it continues after that, then they’d be looking at a revocation of their permit to operate.”
He said that while the department will not let things like what happened last weekend put a damper on the positive trends it is seeing in public health data, it wants to avoid potential super-spreader events.
“I’m glad I got eyes on it because it was a no-brainer that there were too many people down there for the time being,” Fralick said.
The Board of Health will be sending inspectors down every weekend to monitor the establishment and make sure that they are abiding by the COVID-19 restrictions and precautions put in place.
According to Fralick, the owner of Roller World was excited to reopen, but was not present at the time when members of the Board of Health and police arrived at the establishment.
Fralick said that indoor entertainment was at the bottom of the list to reopen because there is a higher probability of close contact and it is more difficult to social distance.
“I understand that people are excited to start seeing things open up,” he said. “But we just want to make sure that people are doing the right thing and staying vigilant because the last time we let our guard down, it was the worst surge that we had during the pandemic.”
Allysha Dunnigan can be reached at adunnigan@itemlive.com. Elyse Carmosino can be reached at ecarmosino@itemlive.com.
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