Florida to reopen bars starting Monday

Florida bars can serve alcohol again starting Monday at 12:01 a.m. after 2 1⁄ months of being closed 2 because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Halsey Beshears, secretary of the Department of Business and Professional Regulation, announced Thursday night that he was rescinding his emergency order in late June that closed most bars in the state.

Bars will again be allowed to operate at 50% capacity, which was permitted for just three weeks after Gov. Ron DeSantis began the second phase of reopening on June 3.

“I would say that’s one of the best bits of news I’ve heard in a while,” said John Cheek, president of Orlando Brewing Co. south of downtown, when told that the ban had been lifted. “It would be good to get back to some sense of normalcy.”

Jacob Weil, a lawyer who represents bar owners suing the state over the shutdown, said he was glad DeSantis was allowing proprietors to reopen.

“Unfortunately, due to the delayed action he took, and unchecked power he allowed Secretary Beshears to take in this unprecedented time, thousands of establishments will never reopen, and those that do will likely never be able to climb out of this hole the state has put them in,” Weil said in a text message.

DeSantis had been strongly hinting that he was eager to reopen the bars, telling bar and brewery owners in St. Petersburg last week that “we really want to get to ‘yes,’ so we’re working hard on it.”

At a meeting with restaurant owners Thursday in Fort Myers, DeSantis said Beshears would have an announcement “very soon” on bars.

Beshears’ June 26 emergency order banning alcohol in bars came

after several violations of the initial reopening of bars at 50% capacity. So many bars and vendors throughout the state were not following

reopening guidelines, the order said, that it made enforcement efforts “impractical and insufficient.”

During the three weeks that bars were open, Beshears suspended the alcohol license at the Knight’s Pub near the University of Central Florida after regulators said 41 customers and employees tested positive for the virus, and two bars in the Jacksonville area made national news after they were reportedly linked to outbreaks. The license for Knight’s Pub was later restored.

Bars were still allowed to sell alcohol to-go, and restaurants could continue to serve drinks.

DeSantis sympathized with bar owners who complained that restaurants could be open and sell alcohol while their doors were either shut or had to pivot to serving food.

“Now, we did have a lot of bars that started serving food,” DeSantis said. “So we actually had bars open the whole time. And, but we had some who just ended up in a situation that wasn’t ideal from their perspective.”

During Thursday evening in downtown Orlando, music drifted out of the open bars and pubs as patrons finished eating dinner and carried out pickup orders.

Many walking or riding scooters down the street

were maskless, but Shaun Dial, 27, wore a fabric mask and carried a touchless door opener on his keychain.

He said he lives in downtown Orlando near the bar scene and frequently sees people lining up to get into bars and restaurants while standing too close together.

Though he has still gone out with friends during the pandemic, he said he tries to minimize his risk by wearing a mask. His friends aren’t as careful, he said.

“When people go out, you get into the mindset of, ‘You’re safe with your friends,’ but no one’s wearing masks inside any of those places at all,” Dial said.

During a visit to a bar on Magnolia Street a couple weeks ago, he said a bartender encouraged him and his friends to take off their masks while they were waiting for their drinks.

Closer to City Hall, a masked employee at Planet Pizza greeted guests while manager Jay Leeks stood nearby.

Leeks, 31, said he thinks it’s not the right time for bars to reopen, and he was “shocked” at the news.

Regardless, he hopes the reopening will bring customers back to downtown and his restaurant, though he said he will continue to limit the number of people dining in and enforce social distancing.

He estimated business has dropped around 35 percent because of the pandemic, and he hopes to get back to

around 75% in the coming weeks as local bars reopen.

“I think it’ll be pretty good to the business,” he said. “... Two weeks after [bars reopening], things will be back the way it was

DeSantis, who has repeatedly stated since June that closing the bars was Beshears’ decision, asserted that shutting them down made no real difference in halting the summer rise in coronavirus cases in the South.

“You look at some of the Sunbelt states,” he said. “Texas, I think, closed the bars entirely. Georgia kept them open. No difference in the epidemic curve. Obviously, we saw some outbreaks linked to bars in Florida. But my sense is that that behavior would probably have been happening in private residences.”

The Department of Health reported 8,942 new positive cases on the day Beshears issued the ban on June 26, part of a growing trend that peaked with more than 15,000 new cases on July 12.

On Thursday, Florida reported 2,583 new coronavirus cases, pushing the statewide total to 654,731 infected. Another 211new virus fatalities reported statewide, with a total of 12,326 Floridians dead.