City officials are hoping to extend the outdoor seating experiment in downtown Longmont into the winter months as the final barricades on Main Street are set to be removed on Nov. 2.
The soon-to-be-gone barricades are the remnants of a traffic diversion plan that began in July to boost customer traffic and pump life into a downtown stung by COVID-19 stay-at-home orders.
A petition started by the co-owners of La Vita Bella cafe asking that the barricades remain in front of their restaurant through 2021 indicates the idea worked, said Phil Greenwald, Longmont’s transportation planning manager.
“The petition certainly reinforces the city’s and CDOT’s (Colorado Department of Transportation) intent that lane closures on Main Street helped local businesses stay open and fully employed during the summer months,” Greenwald said in an email last week.
Although Longmont oversees traffic signals and maintenance on Main Street, the highway is technically under CDOT jurisdiction, Greenwald said.
The city recently received permission from CDOT to extend its special use permit to keep the remaining barricades in place past the original Oct. 2 deadline, he said. But the city is planning to remove the barriers on Nov. 2, before weather and road conditions on city streets become unreliable, he said.
The city is working with the Longmont Downtown Development Authority and local businesses to help create “safer, more winter-friendly places (possibly in the alleys and other sidewalk areas) to set up outdoor seating as the weather gets colder, rather than continue seating in Main Street,” Greenwald said.
Concrete barriers and traffic-diversion barrels were placed on stretches of Main Street in July. The city and downtown boosters hoped the move would prompt restaurants and retailers to expand outdoor seating beyond the sidewalks in front of their businesses to increase customer traffic.
As part of the original plan, the city removed most of the concrete barriers at the end of September. The city agreed to leave the single lane closure in front of The Roost and Pumphouse Brewery in the northernmost half of the 500 block of Main Street, northbound only.
The city also will leave the single lane closures in front of La Vita Bella and Rosalee’s Pizza in the northernmost one-half of the 400 block of Main Street, southbound only.
Outdoor seating in front of La Vita Bella worked so well, the restaurant was able to keep its staff and increase the number of employees, said owners Todd and Andrea Eichorn.
“Even with the winter upon us, we were projecting a 50% increase in sales,” the Eichorns stated in a petition they started on Sumofus. The petition, signed by 600, asks that barriers remain through 2021 to ensure La Vita Bella and other businesses affected by COVID-19 will thrive, Todd Eichorn said.
“I am asking that the city give us approval to keep going,” Eichorn said. “I am asking the city to show everybody what we can do.”
The owners of La Vita Bella cafe on Main Street have started a petition seeking to have the barricades on Main Street remain in place through 2021. (File photo by Rick Brennan)
