EVANSVILLE RESTAURANT SEATING

EVANSVILLE RESTAURANT SEATING

Getting some help as they continue the reopening process.

Local government leaders announcing - that restaurant owners will be able to expand their outdoor seating areas - onto existing property - and public right of ways.... 44 news reporter andrew garcia tells us how - this will make serving you easier.... on monday city officials announced that restaurants have been granted a permit to tempororarily expand dining areas.

Through some of the feedback we've gotten restaurants are obviously ham-stringed right now, because of the 50 percent capacity, because of social distancing they sometimes have to leave a table without individuals.

We thought this would be a good idea to, instead of leave it empty, move that table outside.

All my friends across the us have said their state or their city had had kind of these relaxations of the codes.

To allow for a very quick process in which restaurants could move to more outdoor seating so, there's kind of a lot of moving parts with all this to actually make it happen.

And as with the state's back on track plan, this approval of expanded seating required permission at the state level so that social distancing guidelines are followed.

There's some state regulations that were currently preventing this from happening so we developed a local process and then went to the state and tried to work something out and we came up with a compromise.

With social distancing and making sure that customers feel safe, we certainly involved the health department both at the local and the state level.

If people can be outside it's a much better situation for everybody and so we would love if we were able to spread tables farther apart.

I've got a huge huge parking lot and would be very easy for us to move patio furniture on that side.

And though this permit is only temporary, business owners are hopeful that it can increase business and help make up for money lost during the stay at home orders while protecting customers.

It could really be a temporary fix to a pretty bad problem, in a way that would be able to keep people safer, keep our staff safe, really push people apart and not even have them inside the building it would a smart plan here and it seems other cities across the country are feeling the exact same way about this.

Reporting in evansville, andrew garcia, 44 news.

Officials with the