An idea to introduce temporary outdoor dining to Nelson’s streets to help the hospitality industry may be too complicated for businesses, according to a sector representative.
A raft of changes came into effect when the Government announced that the country, excluding Auckland, would move to Alert Level 2 at midnight on Tuesday.
This included a maximum occupancy of 50 people for indoor venues and 100 people in outdoor venues. All punters must be seated under the rules.
Masks are mandatory for staff and encouraged for customers while not eating or drinking. Social distancing of 1 metre also applies.
With the drop in indoor occupancy numbers, Nelson City councillor Rohan O’Neill-Stevens put forward the idea to utilise road space and parking for temporary outdoor dining, should hospitality businesses want it.
He wrote to council chief executive Pat Dougherty and Mayor Rachel Reese to request council work with the hospitality industry to streamline the process.
“It’s just another opportunity to show we’re willing to be flexible and are open to doing what we can to enable these businesses to be able to recover,” Rohan says.
Nelson Hospitality Association president and co-owner of Vic Public House and Burger Culture, Ian Williams, says it’s great that Rohan is thinking about what council can do to help, but it may not be a viable solution.
“With liquor licensing, I don’t know, I think it would be difficult for [hospitality businesses].”
He says widening of outdoor spaces would require relicensing of premises which is “quite a procedure”.
“The duty manager has a larger area to supervise, and a shortage of staff can make it quite complicated.”
However, Arden Bar & Kitchen owner Lisa Penketh says “why not?”.
“I think as a Covid recovery plan, why not? We need help and will need help. It’s a perfect time to start developing the green space in town while people are community-minded, or at least aware that businesses need humans present to function.”
She says Hardy St, where her business is located, is already growing into a dining and retail precinct and is ready for a small adjustment to make itself known.
Rohan says the suggestion is more about streamlining council’s existing process for outdoor dining to allow for temporary space useage.
“It’s potentially quite a bit of money and effort to go through the process to get car parks turned into dining ... we should and need to be doing all that we can and this is one way we could potentially work with the industry.”
Lisa says they have always wondered if it would be viable to have outdoor dining on the street.
“For us, at this time, nothing is certain in terms of dining habits and attitudes to Covid safety and how that will impact us.”
She agrees that staffing and sparser spacing of customers coupled with more logistics could be a “mega challenge”.
“But people love sitting on the street, so if council can click fingers and get us completely set up for summer we would give it a go for sure.”
