ANSONIA, Conn. —
Connecticut restaurants are two days away from getting the green light to reopen, but many towns and cities say the new “normal” is going to take some planning.
“Our restaurants have suffered the past 2 and half months, they’re in real rough shape,” Ansonia Mayor David Cassetti said. The Mayor said he had a plan to help out nearly 14 restaurants along Main Street.
“I wanted to shut down Main Street and get our citizens to come out, along with the other line in other towns and enjoy our restaurants,” Cassetti said.
It’s a common theme in many cities & towns--figuring how to work with what you got expanding outdoor dining, but shutting down Main street -- a state road -- isn’t going to work. But with just two days left until restaurants can begin to open their doors, Mayor Cassetti has another option ready to go.
“The state informed me and threw a wrench in the gear and stated you can t-shirt main street down you can't block it off the way you want to block it off,” Cassetti said. “Pan b is going up to the football complex and getting all the portable fences and setting them up in the gutter lines with cones so there's no parking on Main street, so the restaurants can bring their tables keeping them a safe distance of six-foot apart.”
Another town known for its selection of restaurants and bars is West Hartford, where a number of outdoor tables and chairs are set up and ready to go.
The Town Council held a special meeting Monday evening discussing reopening plans, including a vision to expand the Town Center and Blue Back Square in efforts to facilitate outdoor dining and retail.
“We’re talking about sidewalks,we're talking about on-street parking spaces, we’re even talking about a portion of a public street or a public parking lot in some instances,” Town Manager Matt Hart said.
Mayor Shari Cantor said promoting more foot traffic at the West Hartford center has been something the Town Council has been working on before COVID-19 hit, but it’s now become a top priority.
“For the outdoor dining outreach we’ve talked to approximately 15 of our outdoor restaurateurs, many of them already engage in outdoor dining, we sent a survey to 113 restaurants, approximately 60% expressed an interest in expanding their footprint, many do not engage in outdoor dining right now,” Hart said.
While many restaurants have some sort of outdoor seating – the majority do not, so the town will be expanding outdoor permits for restaurants and retailers for free. In particular, City Council said it plans on converting LaSalle Road into seating areas for multiple restaurants.
“Restaurants that are located on private property and we have many, if they can obtain permission for their property owner to utilize more of a common area and they can safely do that, we want to be able to rent a permit for that process too,” Hart said.
The expansion project is estimated to cost $163,000 dollars.