New picnic grove tent is nowopenin Wayne
The picnic grove is now open in Wayne
RADNOR » Over the past couple of weeks, a big tent, otherwise known as the picnic grove, has risen inside the Wayne business district, and officials are hoping it can help spur business in town as the region’s economy slowly reopens.
Since it’s gone into place, businesses, residents, and customers have been using the tent located in the North Wayne Parking Lot.
Although it was mainly set up to help businesses, Radnor Police Superintendent Chris Flanagan this weekend said that the tent is open to anyone from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.
That means people getting takeout from restaurants, having a coffee, or parents out with their kids can all use the space.
Another change Flanagan said they’ve made relates to parking in the area.
“The other thing we are doing is that we are waiving all parking charges until we enter the green phase,” Flanagan said.
The idea behind the picnic grove was to help follow Gov. Tom Wolf’s guidelines on social distancing but still allow local businesses to reopen.
At the June 8 board meeting, Radnor Township Manager Bill White said the tent’s location was designed to help those businesses in the North Wayne area. With restaurants only able to serve customers in an outdoor setting and with space limited, the tent was designed to allow customers to order takeout from any of those restaurants and then have enough space for outdoor dining.
“The entire goal is to get folks back into Wayne to help restart that section of the township,” White said.
But there are no plans for the tent to replace the emergency outdoor dining at restaurants.
“The Picnic Grove is meant to compliment outdoor dining, not replace it. Those restaurants who have outdoor dining permits or who will seek to obtain one during the emergency declaration period are encouraged to do so,” township officials said in a press release announcing the picnic grove.
Deanna Doane, vice president of the Wayne Business Association, spoke about the zone on a recent public access television interview.
“We’re really excited to have this tent at this time because we’ve been shut down for so long and so with the cooperation of Radnor Township and the Wayne Business Association we came up with this as an option because so many people were asking us to shut down North Wayne Avenue,” Doane said to MLTV-Main Line Network.
The idea is that members of the public could go to one of the restaurants, order food, and then take it to the picnic grove.
Flanagan said although the tent can hold somewhere around 200 people, they are cutting that number in half to 100 to help maintain the governor’s social distancing guidelines. As an example, tables that might normally hold ten people will only have six chairs. A person is also available to clean the chairs and tables as people leave.
The tent is expected to be up into July.