Gov. weighs demand for indoor dining
Days after Gov. Ned Lamont relented in letting hair salons open ahead of schedule — then looked on as the Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun casinos did the same — a trade group on Wednesday repeated its call for Connecticut restaurants to be allowed to offer indoor dining.
Lamont indicated a willingness to consider moving up the target date. The governor had stuck previously to a June 20 return to indoor dining, after allowing outdoor service to resume two weeks ago.
In a letter to the governor, the head of the Connecticut Restaurant Association blamed the permanent closure of a restaurant near the Connecticut State Capitol building on Lamont’s ongoing restrictions on indoor dining.
Speaking in Farmington Wednesday, Lamont repeated his previous exhortations to “keep the foot on the accelerator” to limit the spread of COVID-19, amid another drop statewide in newly diagnosed infections. At the same time, he left the door ajar to allow for earlier indoor dining.
“Everybody wants to get going yesterday — I appreciate that,” Lamont said. “I am going to be a little cautious in terms of what the next round is . ... Maybe we can accelerate that a little bit.”
Some 550 businesses signed a petition by the restaurant association calling for a return to indoor dining on June 10. They include companies operating nearly 40 restaurants in New Haven and 30 in Stamford,
from chains such as Buffalo Wild Wings, with locations in Stamford, Danbury, Milford and North Haven, to local haunts like Galaxy Diner in Bridgeport and upscale options such as Mediterraneo in Norwalk and Greenwich.
“Without this earlier date, it is clear that more restaurants can and will fail in the intervening
days,” wrote Scott Dolch, executive director of the Connecticut Restaurant Association, in a letter to Lamont distributed to media outlets on Wednesday. “This is not hyperbole. Just this week and only steps from the Capitol, Firebox Restaurant in Hartford closed after 13 years in operation. They simply could not hold out any
longer. Right now, every day counts for our industry.”
Dolch noted that Rhode Island has already resumed indoor dining service, and that Connecticut’s coronavirus case count is better than that of New York and Massachusetts.