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CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- Mayor Lightfoot and CDPH Commissioner Dr. Arwady announced Thursday that a date has been set for the City of Chicago to move to Phase Three of the 'Protecting Chicago' framework.
On Wednesday, June 3 the city will move to Phase Three of Chicago's reopening plan.
The Mayor said, as she announced last week, the businesses will include office space jobs, professional services and real estate services with capacity limitations, along with hotels, lodging, and limited outdoor attractions, including non-lakefron golf courses. Phase Three also includes the partial reopening of restaurants and coffee shops, "with a focus on outdoor space;" as well as non-essential retail stores and personal services, such as hair and nail salons and barbershops, "with precautions in place to protect workers and customers." Also in Phase Three, the City of Chicago will also be reopening child care and in-home family day care facilities.
"All of which supports our work, which needs to be aware from home," Lightfoot said. "Our Phase Three reopening for city services will be delayed by a few days, but it too will reopen on June 8. So for all you parents listening that means our kids can start using libraries and park facilities west of Lake Shore Drive. These new steps are accompanied by guidelines for specific industries, all of which are now available online."
Lightfoot points out that Chicago was the only major city in America that did not cut service to transit systems during the COVID-19 crisis. However, she said, travelers will still need to maintain social distancing in Phase Three when using Chicago transit.
"For that to happen, we will need our businesses to stagger start and end times, as much as possible, so it is not to overwhelm our CTA during traditional peak hours," Lightfoot said. "I also want to remind all of our small businesses, community-based organizations, and small not-for-profits about our partnership with local startup, Reaply, to provide them with access to purchasing face coverings, hand sanitizer, and protective barriers from local, Chicago vendors, so that they can be prepared as we cautiously reopen."
The Mayor said that the hope in Phase Three is to also open other parts of the city, including summer programs, youth activities, religious services, gyms and the lakefront and beaches.
"But we'll have to wait to see how these initial first steps go," Lightfoot said.
"In conjunction with our Phase Three reopening, we are also launching our new public awareness campaign called, Be Safe Chicago, across our social media, billboards, radio and other venues. To get the word out about what Phase Three entails and to make sure there is no confusion about what it means for our city and our residents, we will be embarking on this public campaign," Lightfoot said.
"During the first two phases our campaign was 'Stay Home. Save Lives.' and it worked, helping us get to where we are today, and we are grateful to everything that you did to make this possible. Now our job, as we start to cautiously reopen is to be safe."
The city is also partnering with The Second City for a comedic, weekly web series called, Phased and Confused, to share information about the changes in the "Protecting Chicago" framework on reopening.
"The world will be watching how we do," Lightfoot said.
The Mayor wants to make sure "Chicago is a model for the nation and the world, that we came out of stay at home in a smart, sensible manner, because our residents understood each of our obligations to be safe and the things that we needed to do to get there."
Dr. Allison Arwady announced that "just in the last 24 hours, the U.S. passed 100,000 deaths from COVID-19, Illinois passed 5,000 deaths from COVID-19, and here in Chicago we passed 2,000 deaths from COVID-19. I want to remind people that these are each individual people and that the work we've been doing has helped to save lives, but that we are not done, unfortunately, seeing cases and seeing death, including here in Chicago. And so I'm excited to share the progress that we've made and that we are almost there in terms of being able to start looking ahead."
The most important thing as we look ahead through the summer, Dr. Arwady said, and through a vaccine is how well the people of Chicago continue physical distancing, wear face coverings, stay home if you're sick, etc.
"Moving ahead does not mean these things go away," she said.