Restaurants and bars are opening their doors to seasonal courtyards, but some find that Winnipeg City Council wants to keep them closed a little longer.
While hospitality companies are still trying to regain ground and lost revenue from more than two years of the fall of the COVID-19 pandemic, some homeowners and managers say that inspectors of municipal ordinances and alcoholic beverages do not they are as lenient with the courtyards as they were in the recent past. .
Jason Hooper, artistic director of the West End Cultural Center, said his outdoor venue, hidden behind the Elice Avenue building with its sidewalk entrance, still said can’t open your bar in a converted shipping container. Instead, this weekend the WECC will have to use another temporary open-air bar.
“The only hiccup in town this year is that they have requested structural drawings of our container bar,” Hooper said Friday.
“Our company architect / engineer said it’s not a weird thing. The city wants to make sure it hasn’t been done in such a way that it’s structurally unstable.”
Hooper said this is different from last year, when the shipping container went into use in September without any problems.
“We’re still going to open our yard (this weekend),” he said. “Where we normally have parking, we have built a small stage. We cover the entrance and 100 percent goes to the bands.
“But we’ll finish at 10pm, out of respect for the neighbors … who really enjoyed last year. They put grass chairs in the yard and enjoyed the shows from there.”
Shaun Jeffrey, executive director of the Manitoba Restaurant & Foodservices Association, said he’s not the first to hear about skates.
“Both the (city) inspectors and the (alcoholic) inspectors are definitely much less lenient than they were before the pandemic,” Jeffrey said. “They are really meeting the requirements.
“We understand they are there for a reason, but we really need to have an active backyard season. The restaurants are still in the early stages of recovery.”
Jeffrey said outdoor patios are especially needed for restaurants and bars that can install them because the industry has found that many people, because of the COVID-19, still don’t feel comfortable going in for dinner or a drink. cup.
“We shouldn’t have any blockages,” he added.
Winnipeg City spokesman Kalen Qually said the city first introduced the temporary yard registration program a few months after the pandemic in May 2020.
Qually said he allowed licensed restaurants and establishments to participate in the province’s reopening strategy through “an accelerated courtyard registration process.”
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“Prior to the launch of the temporary yard registration program, companies had to acquire a permanent building and / or development permit and an invasion permit when necessary, to operate their yard space,” he said.
“Since then, the city has continued to offer the temporary registration program as an all-season alternative to the permanent permit process, which is more expensive and time consuming.”
Qually said the council later approved the exemption from administrative fees in the summer of 2021, and has since extended it to March 2023.
The program works and allows the opening of courtyards in the summer from April 1 to October 31 and in the winter from November 1 to March 31.
– with Tyler Searle files
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