North End goEs south again
Restaurant owners hauled back before city over complaints
Boston officials warned North End restaurants that they need to better follow city and state coronavirus rules — as restaurateurs asked why the city won’t let them put up tents as the weather grows cooler.
“Recently we have seen an increase in complaints,” license board general counsel Leslie Delaney Hawkins told the digitally assembled restaurants. “It is very important to remember that this is a neighborhood.”
She added, “A number of complaints that we’ve received lately have been coming from residents.”
She said the complaints largely center around restaurant staff not using masks, not spacing the tables far enough apart and generally not promoting social distancing. This was the second such “emergency” hearing for establishments in the North End, a dense neighborhood home to many of the city’s popular Italian restaurants. The notice for this hearing, like the first in June, also cited complaints of pets and smoking on the patios.
The city has conducted a couple of rounds of “emergency” hearings with establishments in various neighborhoods as the coronavirus wears on and the eateries are allowed to find creative ways of serving people. The tenor of this meeting fell somewhere between the positive vibe of several hearings for the largely complaint-free areas over the summer and the reading of the riot act that the license board gave to the AllstonBrighton establishments a month ago.
Much of Thursday’s hearing was taken up with questions around the nuts and bolts of permitting outdoor heaters as restaurants look to keep diners outside even as the weather gets cooler.
Mayor Martin Walsh this week indefinitely extended the temporary licenses for restaurants to add outdoor seating in private spaces, and said the city will continue to provide public spaces for further outdoor seating through Dec. 1.
Several restaurant owners asked why they aren’t allowed to set up tents or some sort of other barrier to try to help keep diners warm outside in the winter.
“It keeps at least the wind off of people,” said Damien DiPaola of Carmelina’s Restaurant. “You can put as many of those heaters as you want outside. Those are purely aesthetic.”
But Delaney Hawkins said that wasn’t going to happen, given the complications.
“It’s not off the table forever,” but “that’s not something we’re able to move on” this fall, she said. “This issue is the sight lines.”
Inspectional Services Assistant Commissioner Dan Manning told the restaurateurs that the number of cases that came from purely outdoor dining, when that alone was allowed to open back up, was “statistically insignificant.”
“But since going to Phase Three, we’ve seen an uptick in cases inside restaurants,” Manning said. Of outdoor dining, he added, “It’s clearly proven to be a safer environment for your patrons.”