COVID-19 Summary of Outline

The Guardsmen Tree Lot is a flagship event that the Guardsmen Organization throws every year since 1947. The event generally raises in excess of $1.5 million dollars that goes towards the mission of sending At-Risk Youth in the Bay area to Schools and Summer Camp. You can read more about the history on our website sftreelot.guardsmen.org.

This year the organization faces tough decisions in order open the doors of the tree lot. Covid-19 has been very tough on California and San Francisco. The Tree Lot certainly faces many of the challenges that similar retail establishments have had to adapt and overcome in order to operate. Our highest priority is safety for customers and volunteers.

We are looking at two options for our Tree Lot.

  1. The first, and most beneficial is an indoors tree lot inside the Festival Pavilion Warehouse at Fort Mason. Offers more room and operational flexibility.
  2. The second being an outdoor tree lot in the parking lot. More condensed and a re-work of or operational capacity.

The following document is an outline of our plan to hold a safe and viable tree lot in the face of the restrictions the epidemic has placed on us.

In our outline below, we will expand on our plan to hold a socially distant and safe tree lot that meets and exceeds the restrictions on the Federal and State level. We have followed the SFDPH health orders per the website: https://www.sfdph.org/dph/alerts/coronavirus-healthorders.asp as well as reached out to the nursing association at UCSF to incorporate the safest methods, tactics and procedures to provide a safe environment for our customers and volunteers.

At a high level we plan to do the following:

  • Provide and enforce the correct PPE procedures for all volunteers and customers (Throughout Document)
  • Educate volunteers on the latest standards of distancing and PPE procedures
  • Constant communication of Policies and Procedure
  • Operational spread out the trees to create more distancing for customers
  • Limited Capacity for indoor tree lot shopping to exceed current social distancing standards
    (Below the Mass gathering recommendation of 100 per SFDPH health orders)
  • Provide opportunities for customers to order online and pick up curbside
  • Eliminate any food or beverage service
  • Implement appropriate delivery procedures
We also believe an indoor tree lot will be more beneficial in many ways for the Guardsmen and for our tree lot Covid Guidelines. The Festival Pavilion is a much larger space and will allow for us to spread out the space and create a safer environment for our customers and volunteers. The large warehouse structure allows for ample air flow and coupled with distancing and proper PPE compliance would create a low risk environment for everyone involved.
We encourage an open dialogue with the Health Inspectors, For Mason Personnel and Guardsmen so we can create a plan that not only works for everyone, but also sets a precedent for all indoor tree lots throughout San Francisco and the state at large.
Thank you again and we look forward to working with you!

Kyle W. McKenzie
Guardsmen Tree Czar 2020