Why shouldn’t San Diego be among the first cities to expand outdoor dining and make it permanent? And not only because of the nice weather year-around.
The idea for the so-called Spaces for Places program was begun last year in the depths of the pandemic….in an effort to help restaurants survive during a year of stay-at-home public health orders and the color coded COVID restrictions that prevented or limited them from serving food indoors. It’s been estimated that hundreds of restaurants in San Diego were forced to close for a while and many for good. Tens of thousands of people were laid off.
While there are rules and fees for what restaurants may have to do to comply to keep outdoor dining safe under the new program, the help it is expected to provide to these businesses is significant.
As Councilmember Marni von Wilpert put it to the San Diego Union Tribune, “This is one of the silver linings we’ve seen from the horrible ordeal that has been the COVID-19 pandemic.”
And in a city like San Diego that depends on tourists and tourism dollars and an area like the Gaslamp Quarter downtown that can only thrive when restaurants, bars and clubs are operating, the new Spaces for Places program okayed by the City Council this week is a major economic vaccine!
(Photo Getty Images)