WEST OCEAN CITY — With financial support from the resort area’s hospitality industry, Worcester County will host a significant special event in West Ocean City as originally planned.
Last month, Worcester County Recreation and Parks Director Tom Perlozzo pitched the idea of bringing the popular Great Inflatable Race to a location in West Ocean City and sought financial support from the Town of Ocean City to the tune of around $25,000. The Great Inflatable Race is a roughly two-mile fun run over large, inflatable obstacles, sort of a less intense Spartan Race for competitors of all ages and skill levels.
The planned site for the Great Inflatable Race is the Seaside Christian Academy in West Ocean City located behind the large retail centers along Route 50. Worcester County asked Ocean City to contribute $25,000 to help bring the event to the resort area, the assumption being most of the thousands of competitors would stay in hotels and motels on the island and frequent the town’s restaurants, shops and other amenities.
The Great Inflatable Race is already scheduled for 38 other destinations in 2020, including several tourism destination heavyweights, and often draws as many as 4,000 competitors, along with family, friends and spectators. While Ocean City officials embraced the concept, they were reluctant to lend financial support for a major special event off the island.
The Mayor and Council did ultimately approve the $25,000 contribution for the Great Inflatable Race, but only if the event was moved into Ocean City proper somewhere, perhaps on the beach or at Northside Park. The resort officials’ reasons for the ultimatum were varied. Some believed the event wouldn’t necessarily move the needle in terms of filling hotel rooms in Ocean City on the last Saturday in June and just days before the Fourth of July. Others said they could not defend spending Ocean City taxpayer money on an event outside the resort, especially with the growing number of hotel and lodging options in West Ocean City.
Largely, however, it became a provincial issue for some and provided further evidence of the long-simmering feud between Ocean City on issues such as tax differential and providing emergency services across the bridge. Ocean City officials put a caveat on their tacit approval for the $25,000 contribution and urged Perlozzo to go back to the promoter to suggest finding a way to move the race into Ocean City.
However, a week later, the Ocean City Hotel-Motel-Restaurant Association (OCHMRA) stepped into the breach and offered to contribute the $25,000 to help Worcester County bring the event to West Ocean City. The OCHMRA recognized the potential of the nationally-known event for its members, which have businesses on both sides of the bridge.
Perlozzo confirmed this week the Great Inflatable Race is coming to the Seaside Academy in West Ocean City as originally planned on Saturday, June 27.
The Great Inflatable Race website already lists the West Ocean City event among the dozens of other events around the country this year. Interestingly, the website lists the June 27 race as an “Ocean City” event. Online registration for the event is open and as of Thursday, it had reached 36% capacity with still over three months until the race.
