By Andy Nielsen
Many restaurant and pub owners in Centretown are planning to keep their patios open until winter this year in an effort to put off going completely non-smoking for as long as possible.
Patios are currently the only place in Ottawa’s restaurants and bars where it is still legal to smoke, because they are open to the air.
Several owners and managers are worried that business, which they say has already slowed as a result of Ottawa’s smoking bylaws, will slow even further when the patios have to close for the winter.
Edgar Mitchell, owner of the Duke of Somerset pub on Bank Street, says that his business has suffered because he has lost regular customers. He says he thinks it will get worse when his patio closes for the winter, so he plans to put that off for as long as possible by setting up a heated tent.
“Everybody is down 15 to 20 per cent in total business,” Mitchell says. “Having a patio, you get back maybe 10 per cent of that. When the patio closes, that’s gone.”
Paul Boutros, a manager at Swagman Jack’s on Elgin Street, says business there has increased since the smoking ban.
He says he thinks that maybe because the restaurant, which has a patio, is attracting business from other restaurants and pubs that do not have patios.
Boutros says the restaurant also plans to put up a tent over the patio, and to keep it open until snow starts to fall.
“We’ll have flaps to stop the wind, but we’ll have openings on either side,” Boutros says.
“If we put a heater inside there we can probably keep it open a bit longer.”
City spokesperson Andrew Scaling says that a tent could be in violation of the bylaw if it is not set up right.
“If it’s an enclosed area, then it would be in violation of the bylaw,” says Scaling.
“A patio more or less by definition is an outdoor space. So if they put a roof over it and four walls, then it’s no longer a patio.”
Gray Johnson, a manager at the James Street Feed Co. on Bank Street, says the restaurant plans to put a tent over its patio in order to keep it open longer than usual this fall, but will also be mindful of the bylaw.
Their patio will have openings on one or more sides to prevent it from being enclosed completely. Johnson says he thinks that in the long run people will continue to go to pubs and restaurants, despite the smoking ban.
“People are not going to change their social patterns,” Johnson says.
“There’s a social factor to going out to a bar or restaurant and having a few drinks and watching the game, and I don’t think they’re going to change that.”