Restaurants To Seat Customers Outdoors, Parking Areas To Expand Dine-In Capacity
PASADENA (CBSLA) - Vicken Satamian is one of more than a dozen restaurant owners in Sierra Madre who are looking foward to the city's new plan that will help smaller restaurants like Satamian's Corfu reopen for dine-in service.
"We were packed on the weekends and we have live music and none of that is happening right now. Business went down to 20%, sometimes even worse than that," said Satamian.
City manager Gabe Engeland says the plan will give smaller restaurants like those in the city's downtown a chance survive when Los Angeles County eventually allows dining in at half capacity or less.
The additional space on the sidewalk and parking areas will add about 400 square feet of dining space to each restaurants.
"What we heard is people were more comfortable eating outdoors, being outside, so we worked with the chamber to identify areas on the sidewalk and areas on the street we can add outdoor seating to, which would also add capacity to the restaurant", Engeland said.
City officials say they may start the work of restructuring the areas around the restaurants as soon as next week.
"We're going to open up some of the street parking and close off some slots here so that the restaurants can set up some tables more on the sidewalk, more on the streets so they can keep the appropriate social distancing, hopefully help them out a little bit and drive up some revenue for the restaurants," said Sierra Madre Mayor John Capoccia.
