A new North Carolina bill currently under review aims to reopen bars under Phase 2 and increase restaurant capacity when outdoor seating is available.

North Carolina legislators voted last week to increase restaurant capacity and essentially overturn Governor Roy Cooper’s order to keep bars closed under Phase 2. To do this, the general assembly introduced a new bill: House Bill 536 Temp Outdoor Restaurants for Outdoor Seating.

House Bill 536 would allow any establishment that serves food or drink to open and operate so long as they follow the 50 percent capacity rule for indoor dining outlined in the Governor’s order, limit their outdoor seating to 50 percent of the current indoor capacity and ensure that social distancing guidelines outlined by the CDC are enforced.

For bars to reopen under HB 536, all of the same conditions would apply as they do for restaurants, except all service would be limited to an outdoor seating location.

Carrboro Mayor Lydia Lavelle said the addition of reopening bars is where this bill loses her support.

“So half the bill is a pretty good bill and half the bill is not a good bill,” Lavelle said. “So it will be interesting to see what the governor does.”

This legislation, passed in the House and Senate Thursday morning, would challenge Governor Cooper’s power and standing executive order. Governor Cooper publicly urged legislators to reconsider the measure, saying his decision to keep bars shuttered through at least June 26 was based on data and health experts.

Under HB 536, a restaurant’s or bar’s outdoor seating area may include public sidewalks or streets and local governments would not have the authority to prohibit these temporary outdoor seating locations.

Lavelle said while the town was already working towards finding ways to assist restaurants and increase outdoor dining in Carrboro, she doesn’t think re-opening bars is currently a good idea.

“I think just to generalize around a bar type situation, usually they’re more enclosed, usually people are standing rather than sitting and usually people are drinking and so maybe they lose their inhibitions a little more as the evening goes on,” Lavelle said. “We’ve heard all the statistics about indoor – how bad the virus is in terms of being spread indoors – so I think all of those combined together are reasons why the governor pushed bars out to the next go-round.”

While bars were not included in the state’s Phase 2 of re-opening, breweries were and Lavelle acknowledged that there has been increased frustration because of that – although, she said she is concerned about those businesses too.

“It’s really hard to spread people around in areas and indoor place where people usually stand and congregate and I think that’s the difference between that [bars and breweries] and restaurants,” Lavelle said.

Local establishments like Steel String Brewery agree with her. Co-Owner of Steel String, Eric Knight, said they are still being very cautious despite being able to open under Phase 2.

“For us it didn’t make sense to open until we felt 100 percent comfortable or as close to that as possible – that we were not going to be a place where exposure was going to be a frequent possibility,” Knight said. “For us it’s not trying to rush back to what the old normal was and try to be like ‘how can we take the situation and try to reconfigure our business to be effective in the long run if there are continued social distancing measures and restrictions on where people can be in our social and economic lives.’”

If made into law, HB 536 would expire 30 days after the Governor’s executive order is lifted or on October 31 of this year – whichever is sooner.

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