COLUMBUS, Ind. — Columbus has thrown a lifeline to its downtown restaurants in the form of flexible outdoor seating in the hopes of keeping the area’s vibrancy intact as the COVID-19 pandemic continues.
“You can kind of sense a little bit of a shift in people’s attitudes to wanting to get back out there, but yet still distancing and being safe,” said Kurt Schwarze, co-owner of 4th Street Bar and Grill, one of the restaurants that is being allowed to expand out into Fourth Street for additional outdoor seating on weekends.
The Columbus Board of Works has allowed the 4th Street Bar and Grill, along with several other restaurants nearby, to add additional outdoor seating and close the street on weekend nights from 4 p.m. to midnight, to allow them to bring tables and chairs outdoors for customers.
“It’s been great,” Schwarze said of the first weekend of the outdoor seating. “To date, the weather has been perfect too. So we haven’t really had any hot days or rainy days since we’ve opened that. So people are really enjoying that. And again, it allows people to be separated a little bit better in fresh air. And you know, we’ve had a very good response to that. It’s still quite slow during the week and during lunches especially, because there aren’t a whole lot of office workers returning to downtown yet. But we’ve been pleased with the turnout.”
Schwarze said that he’s holding back from opening his bar seating at half capacity, even though he is allowed to do so. There are a few stools available at the bar, though, for any single customers who don’t want a whole table to themselves.
“We’re still just trying to make sure that people feel safe, and we’re doing everything we can to have our staff and our customers be safe,” Schwarze said. He added that “the biggest promotion that any restaurant can do right now is try to maintain a safe environment.”
“The government can’t bail everybody out, the landlords can’t give people free rein forever and so forth and so on, so the only real solution is to try to get back to some sense of normality,” he said. “And right now, we still have a virus to deal with, so we need to see what we can do getting back some sense of normality but at the same time being safe.”
Sometimes, “normal” seems like a far-off dream. Still, despite having closed Joe Willy’s Burger Bar for about a month, owner John Wilhelmi said his business is “right around the corner from being back to normal.”
“The previous employees, for the most part, came back to work, which was a good thing,” Wilhelmi said. “And at first there was a little bit of skittishness from the employees and a little bit of the same from the customers, but they’re all coming back pretty normal. So I’m pretty satisfied so far.”
Like Schwarze, Wilhelmi noted the ongoing loss of lunchtime business from downtown workers, many of whom have been working from home since March, and not eating out for lunch.
“Cummins was a very good supporter of our restaurant,” Wilhelmi said. “We’re close to them, and I believe they’re still restricted quite a bit themselves. So we’re definitely feeling their absence. But, I made a comment the other day, I said, ‘It’s amazing to me we’re as busy as we are with Cummins and people not coming in like they used to.’”
For more on this story, including more photos, see Friday’s Republic.
