Saratoga restaurants expanding outdoor dining in the streets for a second year
Outdoor dining is starting to sprout in Saratoga Springs. City leaders gave restaurant owners an early green light to expand outside.
"We started March 15th, and normally it would have been April 1st, so the city's done everything they could to use exterior space in order to satisfy customers and keep them safe." Todd Shimkus, the President of the Saratoga County Chamber of Commerce, said.
The city allowed restaurants to find creative ways to use outdoor space, and apply for approval - whether they use parking lots, alleyways, or sidewalks and street space using these concrete barriers. A local company donated about 80 barriers last year, and they're putting them back out now.
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"We had both D.A Collins and Peter Gailor Landscaping came out over the course of the last week, and helped us make this happen." Shimkus said of putting barriers in place.
Solevo Kitchen and Social is one of the restaurants that's preparing to set up a patio in the street. They did the same last summer, after a rough journey through the first wave of COVID.
"If you look back a year ago, we were closed, we decided not even to do takeout and delivery after a certain point in time - so this year, we're really hitting the ground running!" Giovannina Solevo, part owner, said.
There was so much uncertainty with the virus, and it's their family-run business, so she said they decided to close and keep everyone healthy.
Solevo says it was a huge relief to hear the outdoor expansion and barriers were returning, and earlier than expected.
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She says the recent 75% capacity expansion didn't help them much because their inside dining room is small. They purchased barriers to help.
"It's almost impossible to be at 75% capacity, just due to the nature of our business, so being able to expand out onto the sidewalk and expand in the street, allows us to make up for the lost 75% that we aren't making inside." Solevo said.
Plus she said customers love the atmosphere outside. "We like to present this as an Italian piazza in the summer - and people love it! Our wait staff loves working it, it's a fun, bustling atmosphere out here."
She says it's initiatives like this use of outdoor space that has saved them, and other restaurants.
"Having this changed our business for the better." she said. "It feels good, it feels like we're somewhat getting back to normal, we're seeing people we haven't seen in forever because we have the outdoor dining option, because more people are getting vaccinated."
