Downtown Wooster to have outdoor refreshment area
The DORA (designated outdoor refreshment area) passed this month in Wooster will allow patrons of the city’s downtown restaurants to possess and consume alcoholic beverages outside within a designated area and within certain time frames.
Wooster will be one of 29 Ohio communities featuring a DORA, a designated outdoor refreshment area, in its downtown.
An ordinance creating the area passed city council on Aug. 17.
The DORA will allow patrons of downtown restaurants to possess and consume alcoholic beverages outside within a designated area and within certain time frames.
The way it will work, according to Main Street Wooster executive director Shannon Waller, is patrons will purchase their beverage in an official plastic cup at a restaurant and will be allowed to carry that beverage throughout the DORA.
“You will be able to carry it while strolling downtown, as well as also carrying it into whatever retail establishments indicate that they participate in the DORA,” Waller said.
DORA beverages cannot be sold in any other container, and patrons are not allowed to bring a drink from one restaurant into another restaurant. Cups will include a dated receipt.
The DORA borders are TJ’s Trio of Restaurants to the west, JAFB Wooster Brewery to the east, along Liberty Street and to the Olde Jaol Steakhouse and Tavern to the north, and to the south along Liberty Street extending to Henry Station.
The hours will be Monday through Friday from 4-11 p.m. and from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. on the weekend.
“We’re really looking forward to it,” said Glen Grumbling, owner of Broken Rocks and Rox Gastropub. “If anything positive came out of COVID, this is it.”
Grumbling said he’s heard there have been no problems in other places that have adopted the plan. “This will just be life out on the sidewalks, like anywhere in Europe,” he said.
According to the DORA application, 17 downtown restaurants will participate including Broken Rocks, City Square Steakhouse and Muddy’s, which were the three main stakeholders in the application process. Other restaurants planning to participate include Basil, Salsaroja, Spoon Market and Deli, Omaha Bob’s, Meatheads Union, Flamingo Jacks, Henry Station, Best Western, Minglewood Distillery and The Leaf.
Main Street Wooster and The Wooster Area Chamber of Commerce coordinated and supported the application.
“This has been just another example of our downtown stakeholders and the community at large coming together to support our vibrant, historical downtown,” Justin Starlin of the Wooster Area Chamber of Commerce said.
Starlin said with the current economic climate, the plan was a great development for the survival of several downtown restaurants, which indicated they’d have a real hard time just breaking even this year.
“We’re not flying into this blind. We’ve studied other towns that have done this successfully,” Waller said.
The nearby cities of Canton and Kent have DORAs, Waller said. “If we don’t do this, it will actually put us at an economic disadvantage,” she said.
Restaurants are not the only entities that will benefit from the DORA, according to Waller. “This will be great to increase foot traffic for our downtown merchants, who also are trying to survive during the virus,” she said. “It’s a benefit all the way around to restaurants, retail, entertainment and the service sector.”
“This sounds like it’s gonna be a good thing,” said Josh Lehman, owner of Operation Fandom. “We expect most of the foot traffic to be around dinnertime. And it’ll be nice since the construction is wrapping up.”
Surveys of downtown stakeholders and city residents were done through Facebook, Waller said, with roughly 450 comments. Overall, the surveys generated nearly 800 total responses with more than 90% favorable to the DORA.
“We’ve been very thorough at getting feedback from the community at large, and the reception of the program has been overwhelmingly positive,” Waller said. “A lot of comments came from people who said they’d be more likely to visit downtown when they could be outside, due to social distancing during the pandemic.”
Another common survey response was the DORA would extend the feeling of Woosterfest.
Most of the small number of negative comments reflected a concern that the homeless problem downtown would somehow be exacerbated and that safe social distancing would be harder to observe and enforce.
The DORA application indicated the area would be policed within the patrolling regularly scheduled in the downtown. If a special event was planned, the organizer of the event would be responsible for hiring an appropriate number of off-duty officers.
Wooster City director of administration Joel Montgomery said the DORA faces a couple more steps before kicking off, even once the ordinance has been passed by city council.
“It would have to be submitted to the Department of Commerce Division of Liquor Control by Aug. 21. We anticipate approval, and we will probably have that in September,” he said.