{"id":224336,"date":"2026-04-09T03:12:52","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T03:12:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/224336\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T03:12:52","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T03:12:52","slug":"plant-city-main-street-pauses-events-through-september","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/224336\/","title":{"rendered":"Plant City Main Street pauses events through September"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>PLANT CITY, Fla. \u2014 After Plant City Main Street Executive Director Dawn Hyatt recently announced she would be stepping down, the officials at the organization decided to pause its events through the end of September.<\/p>\n<p>The move is leaving businesses and vendors in limbo, wondering how to replace the foot traffic the events brought in.<\/p>\n<p>What You Need To Know<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.plantcitymainstreet.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Plant City Main Street<\/a> was founded in 2017 and is behind the free events in the downtown area<br \/>\n<br \/>Executive Director Dawn Hyatt announced in a recent Plant City Commission meeting that she would be stepping down<br \/>\n<br \/>The decision has prompted the Main Street board to pause all events through the end of September<br \/>\n<br \/>Those events include Last Friday, farmer&#8217;s markets and Oktoberfest, which has been held in September in the past<\/p>\n<p>For one business owner in downtown Plant City, Main Street was the start of his business journey and the source that drew in customers to its free events. But with events paused for several months, a lack of foot traffic could soon change that.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>For Cody Lenz, what started off as a hobby eventually transformed into the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/threehandsmead.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Three Hands Mead Company,<\/a>\u00a0which opened in 2021.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMain Street was instrumental in helping us get our business launched here in Plant City,\u201d he said, explaining that the organization helped him\u00a0get\u00a0grants and bring in new customers during Plant City downtown events.<\/p>\n<p>Lenz said the decision to pause events will have\u00a0a direct effect on his business. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have people that we only see once a month, and they come down here because of these events,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Plant City Main Street Vice President\u00a0Lizzette Sarria said the pause will affect events like Last Friday, farmers markets and the most popular, Oktoberfest, which has been held in September.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere is no way that a board of six, that has full-time jobs and other businesses, that we could run those events effectively,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>Sarria\u00a0said it was a tough decision to make, as the events drew in thousands of people and provide foot traffic many businesses rely on.<\/p>\n<p>Lenz\u00a0said he hopes some kind of replacement or solution can be found. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf those vendors aren\u2019t successful, they won\u2019t want to come out,&#8221; he said. &#8220;If the brick-and-mortar place isn\u2019t successful, they might not last.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PLANT CITY, Fla. \u2014 After Plant City Main Street Executive Director Dawn Hyatt recently announced she would be&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":224337,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[2031,274,558,276,6076,115,135,137,136,278,835],"class_list":{"0":"post-224336","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tampa","8":"tag-app-local-business","9":"tag-app-top-stories","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-hillsborough-county","12":"tag-lizbeth-gutierrez","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-tampa","15":"tag-tampa-headlines","16":"tag-tampa-news","17":"tag-top-stories","18":"tag-vod"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224336\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}