Refreshment area starts downtown

It’s legal to walk around downtown Lorain with cups of beer or mixed drinks, but it’s unclear if many people know it yet.

Lorain’s outdoor refreshment area is established for downtown, according to legislation approved this year by Lorain City Council. The city has published a brochure featuring rules, a map and a photo of a red plastic cup on the front.

Under the rules, downtown diners can walk around the area with alcoholic beverages in plastic containers.

The drinks must be purchased from qualified permit holders in the area along Broadway from

Erie Avenue south to Ninth Street.

The effective times are noon to 1 a.m. Friday and Saturday and noon to 10 p.m. other days.

At least three downtown business owners also said the Ohio Division of Liquor Control has exchanged their liquor permits to show they are in the designated area, so can sell alcoholic beverages for people to carry out and drink.

A city sign outside Scorcher’s marks the boundary of the outdoor refreshment area.

If customers ask for a plastic cup to take a drink outside, bartenders will honor the request, said Will Castro, co-owner of Scorcher’s Casual Eatery & Draft House, 900 Broadway.

Scorcher’s has a box of the city brochures, but staff have not yet done much to publicize the area, Castro said. The owners are grateful to the city leaders for anything they can do to

promote downtown Lorain, he added.

Sabor Tropical, 401 Broadway in the basement of the Duane Building, also has changed over its liquor license to sell drinks for take-away. Otherwise the staff there know little about the outdoor refreshment area or how it will help Lorain, said owner Elba Rodriguez and Angie Cintron, a relative and helper there.

The owners of Bootlegger’s Den, 538 Broadway, learned about the outdoor refreshment area when the state agents changed their liquor permit, said a manager there.

“A lot of people don’t know about it,” she said. “We tell people and they’re excited about it.

“I just wish there were more businesses on the strip that people could go to,” she said.

The designated drink area could be helpful for planning events and festivals outside the Broadway businesses, said Kurt Hernon, operations director for programming at the Lorain Palace Theater. It opens the potential for downtown, he

said.

The rules are not onerous and restrictive, so the area could be a kick start to attract people and businesses downtown as long as merchants and follow the rules, Hernon said.

Planners of the FireFish Festival are aware of the outdoor refreshment area, said Executive Director James Levin.

Attending festivals in Charleston, S.C., and Chicago, Levin said he saw people walking around with their drinks.

“It seemed like a perfectly normal, reasonable thing to do,” and patrons were not falling down intoxicated, he said.

Creating the Ingenuity Festival in Cleveland, Levin described how he applied for a liquor permit and described the drinking area from Public Square to East 9th Street, instead of a 20-foot-by-20-foot beer tent.

People protested, but Levin said he argued for expanding the area. A police officer agreed how most open container arrests happened when officers cited a

parent holding a drink as they left the confines of the drinking area to chase down wandering children, Levin said.

Since then, the larger designated drinking areas were not a problem, including at the inaugural FireFish in September 2015.

“It creates a nice, more relaxed, reasonable adult environment,” Levin said about the outdoor refreshment area. “I think ultimately it will be a great thing for Lorain.”

Howard Ross, co-owner of the Elyria-based Franklin Brewing Co. and co-organizer of BrewFest Waterfront District, questioned if people need to leave one restaurant with a drink to carry down the street to another.

“I think it’s too early to tell if it’s going to help or not,” he said. “From my own point of view, I don’t see a need for it.”