Panel backs Kansas City street cafes — with tweaks — to help restaurants amid COVID-19
Kansas City restaurants may soon be able to expand into parking lots, streets and sidewalks to accommodate more patrons outside during the coronavirus pandemic after a panel signed off on the idea Tuesday.
The city’s restaurants are currently only allowed to serve patrons at tables spaced 10 feet apart, and they must follow a host of other safety standards. To boost the industry, which has suffered because of social-distancing requirements and stay-at-home orders, the city may let restaurants expand outdoors to serve more customers.
Last week, Mayor Quinton Lucas, Councilwoman Andrea Bough and Councilman Eric Bunch introduced three pieces of legislation that would allow restaurants to apply for temporary permits to run street cafes or “parklets.”
The Alcohol Beverage Advisory Group, which makes recommendations to the City Council, signed off on the proposals — with some recommended changes — Tuesday. A City Council committee was expected to consider the issue Wednesday.
“We have a pandemic facing us. The industry needs help,” said Jim Bowers, a real estate attorney who chairs the advisory group. “These temporary rules are intended to address, in a very limited way, the industry’s ability to serve customers and comply with the social-distancing requirements and safety requirements to reopen in light of the pandemic.”
One of the proposed ordinances allows restaurants to apply for permits to operate sidewalk or street cafes in parking spaces in the public right-of-way. Another eliminates required parking ratios so that adding tables in parking lots won’t throw restaurants off zoning requirements. They both allow restaurants to serve alcohol in their expanded dining area.
The third extends the period of time where the city will relax its enforcement of liquor rules to, in essence, allow for to-go cocktails.
The group recommended several changes to the legislation.
As drafted, the permits would be allowed for seven months or until the end of the emergency declaration Lucas extended until Aug. 15. Every 90 days, restaurants would have to renew them.
But the group suggested that the 90-day renewal be eliminated and that the permits be good for seven months, whether Lucas’ emergency declaration has ended or not.
Bowers said giving a definitive end date to the program would provide “certainty … in a time of uncertainty.”
“There’s going to be some financial things if you’re going to get a tent, your fencing and all that stuff,” said Chris Lewellan, a restaurant owner and member of the group. “I want to know that I could spread that out over seven months.”
The group recommended revising the legislation to let restaurants add seating not only in their unused parking spaces, but also in the driving rows between them. The group also recommended following suggestions by Dick Bryant, a liquor license attorney, including allowing the same rules for taverns, expanding the rules to all outdoor spaces around the restaurant and eliminating some inspection and design rules.
They amended a final piece of legislation to allow to-go cocktails to be delivered outside of the 50-foot radius proposed by the legislation in the event of a street closure.
This story was originally published May 19, 2020 at 5:31 PM with the headline "Panel backs Kansas City street cafes — with tweaks — to help restaurants amid COVID-19."
