The Downtown Guelph Business Association is considering a request to the city to make the weekend’s initial downtown ‘dining district’ patio event permanent all day, every day for the rest of the summer.
They are in the process of surveying businesses before making a final recommendation.
An expanded area of the Macdonell/Wyndham streets intersection was closed to vehicles from Saturday morning to Sunday evening as a pilot project allowed businesses to extend patios into the street.
The patios were busy, particularly at dinner time and later.
“I think if you had a patio downtown or if you visited a patio downtown over the weekend it was very, very successful,” said Sam Jewell, events manager with the DGBA.
“It was a wonderful atmosphere and the restaurants worked so hard, given the late notice from the city that this was happening, to make this happen.”
Guelph’s first foray into the ‘dining district’ concept wasn’t without it’s issues, primarily some smaller businesses upset about the negative impact the road closure had on them.
But overall both the DGBA and the mayor considered it a big success.
“I was extremely impressed,” said Mayor Cam Guthrie, who was downtown in the morning, afternoon and evening checking out how it was going.
He was aware of the issues and spoke with some of the upset businesses.
Guthrie called it a “tweak as you go” initiative that will take into consideration any concerns businesses have as it moves forward.
“The whole point of a pilot project is to determine what works and what doesn’t,” Guthrie said, both short term and long term.
The city will be gathering input and deciding how to move forward this week. It could include permanent closure of the Macdonell/Wyndham intersection all summer.
“Those types of ideas are being vetted and considered moving forward. If it makes sense to have it done only on the weekends, then so be it. If it makes sense to have it more permanent throughout the rest of the summer, that would be fine too. Whatever helps everyone,” said the mayor.
The DGBA thinks seven days a week for the rest of the summer might be a good idea, but is waiting to see what its members say in the survey.
If it did go seven days a week, they want it but slightly reduced in size to accommodate businesses that rely on having parking in front for pick-up and take-out.
Making it permanent will enhance the goal of the initiative while also making it easier for establishments to plan and control their patios to help maintain Public Health guidelines, Jewell said.
“If this is going to continue we are actually going to support it being closed permanently until the end of summer,” she said.
“That’s because of the safety aspect. We can get it inspected, get tables exactly where they need to be, we can have dedicated areas for people to line up and then rules about no table-hopping, no dancing, no singing …. That’s our message. Come out, have fun, but don’t have too much fun.”
Patio capacity for a business is their indoor capacity plus any pre-existing patio capacity, but only as far as it allows for physical distancing guidelines to be maintained.
In addition to some late-night physical distancing issues, when the dining turned more to drinking, there were some other concerns that will be addressed.
“There definitely are things that can be tweaked,” said Guthrie.
Jewell, the recommendation from the DGBA is for the closed-off section of Macdonell to be shrunk to provide greater pick-up access.
“There were businesses within the road closure zone that were adversely affected by it and we’re working with them, those that were relying on parking spaces out front that were taken away. We’re working with them on that,” Jewell said.
Noise was another concern, with some complaints from some residents of downtown about music being too loud.
The city supplied 50 picnic tables that were used by some of the businesses, but others supplied their own.
“There really is an opportunity here, from a tourism point of view, to put Guelph on the map more than it already is,” Guthrie said.
