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Business owners react to caution flag thrown on attendance at Indy 500

Even with a smaller crowd inside the track, Main Street business owners hope fans will visit Speedway to be close to the action.

SPEEDWAY, Indiana — 2020 has been a year where the world has come to expect the unexpected.

“It’s like a bizarre world, it’s like an upside down world,” said Marcia Huff at Barbecue and Bourbon on Main in Speedway.

That’s why in the Racing Capital of the World, postponing the Indy 500 because of a global pandemic was hardly a shock to business owners.

“It’s tough. We pay a lot of bills in May,” said Chris Hill, owner of Dawson’s on Main. “When it doesn’t happen, it hurts, but as a small business owner, you just kind of deal with it and just keep pushing forward.”

And that’s just what he and other merchants are doing amid Tuesday’s announcement from IMS that attendance had been cut from the originally-planned 50 percent of capacity down to 25.

“I think any percent is a good percent,” Hill said. “You know, it was 50 and we’re OK with that. I mean, 25 percent, it is what it is. We just want to have a race.”

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Even with fewer fans inside IMS for the race, business owners on Main Street hope people will come to Speedway to spend their money and be close to the action.

“I think they will, for the atmosphere,” said Huff. “People are just dying to do anything. They want some kind of activity, so I think they will.”

“We’ll take anybody that’s willing to come in. If it’s 25 percent, then it’s 25 percent, we’ll work with that,” said Jalen Camarillo with Fundae’s Ice Cream & Sweets.

In a day when IMS may have thrown the caution flag on attendance, these business owners are hoping everything can still go green.

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