City officials will allow Fourth Street in downtown Columbus to be closed from 4 p.m. to midnight on Fridays and Saturdays to allow a restaurant there to have additional outdoor seating.
The city’s board of works has approved a special use of right of way request for the Fourth Street Bar & Grill for the additional outdoor seating.
“We’ve been working with them, and in light of the current pandemic and the need to improve their business climate, I believe what they’re requesting is very doable, and we’ll continue to work with Kurt (Schwarze) to make that happen,” said Executive Director of Public Works and City Engineer Dave Hayward.
According to Kurt Schwarze, who co-owns the restaurant with his wife Kelly, there are two parts to the request.
“One is additional dining on the sidewalk next to our patio, and that’s every day of the week,” he explained. “That will allow us additional tables on the part of the sidewalk that’s not used by anybody else. The second part of that would be on Fridays and Saturdays, and that would allow us to potentially close the streets on Fridays and Saturdays to move tables and chairs out into the street. I don’t anticipate doing that every single week, because the weather’s not great every single week.”
Through Oct. 31, 2020, the restaurant will have the option to close its section of the street on Friday and Saturday evenings, from 4 p.m. to midnight.
“We want to be able to see that we’re going to use the additional tables on the sidewalk first, before we make any decision about the street,” Schwarze added. “Basically we just made both requests together to give us quite a bit of flexibility.” He also noted that if the restaurant begins to do more business inside, it may not need to use the permits for long.
For more on this story, see Tuesday’s Republic.
