The owner and staff at Miracle Beach Mini Golf can’t seem to catch a break.
In late February, vandals caused significant damage to the nearly 30-year-old business in Black Creek.
Manager Samantha Seeley called it the worst vandalism that they had ever seen there.
The vandals broke the front door, smashed glass all around the facility, damaged the ceramic sink in the women’s bathroom, broke all of the upper storey decorative and plexiglass windows out of the waterfall house, and kicked out and smashed three of the wooden panels on the deck.
READ MORE: Vandals cause destruction at Miracle Beach Mini Golf
After extensive repairs, the business opened in mid-March, only to close after three days because of the pandemic.
Seeley said the goal now is to reopen for part of the summer, as restrictions begin to slowly ease around the province.
“We’re just looking at our options now, and how we can open safely, to keep our staff safe and to keep customers safe, because, under our usual operations, it gets very crowded in there,” Seeley added.
The pandemic came at a time when Seeley was hiring staff and gearing up to open fully for spring break.
“Then we went into all of the shutdown and the restrictions and we had made the decision a little bit prior to that, when things started getting bad, that we were going to close because, even with the new procedures that we had put into place, we didn’t feel like we could feel staff safe, and keep our customers as safe as we wanted to,” Seeley said.
Seeley said that if they don’t open this year, the plan is to “definitely” open in 2021.
“We’re keeping up the maintenance, we are still doing repairs, there were still a few repairs yet to be done from the vandalism, so we are on top of those,” Seeley said.
If it does reopen this year, it won’t be until sometime after June 1st, according to Seeley.
“I am in constant discussions with the owner about how we can open and do it safely,” she added. “So no matter what, there are going to be some major changes to our business model for this summer, specifically, but we are hoping to open.”
