Starting Friday at 5 p.m. Kirkwood will be blocked off from Grant Street to Indiana Avenue.
(WFIU/WTIU News)
The Bloomington City Council approved this weekend's trial run closure of Kirkwood Avenue for restaurants and shops to have outdoor seating at its meeting Wednesday night.
Ordinance 20-11 unanimously passed in an effort to increase downtown commerce, while still remaining safe during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I do want to urge everyone to be careful when they go out," council president Steve Volan says. "I know that my colleagues and I have seen a number of people who have decided that masks are no longer important. They and continue to be.”
The closure will begin at 5 p.m. Friday and extend until late Sunday evening.
The city’s Director of Economic Sustainability Alex Crowley says merchants will still have to operate within the Stage 4 reopening guidelines.
“We are not enabling them to increase their capacity," Crowley says. "We're allowing them to distribute that capacity across a broader spectrum."
Stage 4 rules state restaurants can be at 75 percent capacity, while retail shops may return to 100 percent.
Crowley says the goal of having more outdoor seating is to make customers feel safer.
“The hypothesis here is that people may or may not be comfortable with inside a restaurant, but they may be more comfortable going outside of a restaurant," Crowley says.
Crowley says city staff will be out monitoring the area to make sure the guidelines are being followed.
"We'll have a pretty good idea of those types of problems that might exist that we're not anticipating," Crowley says.
Crowley says customers will be able to take a safety survey by scanning an on-site QR code via smartphone. He says the city will review the survey results to see where it can make improvements.
If successful, the closure will run through September 30.
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