The weather is not yet calling for this, but authorities in Clarenden Hills have carried forward further plans to improve the external food environment in the city area of the village.
During the Kovid -19 epidemic, the village first replaced some public parking for the use of outdoor dining. Earlier, the option was present only for outdoor food on the pavement.
During the first year of the epidemic, there were six restaurants using space in public parking areas in the village, and obstacles were placed to block those places. Since then, the village al -Fresco is more permanent, and pleasant, separating places for food.
“This year we expect only one (restaurant) in the parking area, because we are constructing parklets on the way to park and rail, to permanently adjust those areas,” Village Manager Zach Creyer Said. “Overall, the pavement and the parklets will accommodate seven restaurants in the city.”
Social disastering requirements and preferences popularized outdoor dining during the early days of epidemic. While the days have gone, there is hunger for external food, Kreyer said.
“It’s still very popular,” he said. “We are looking to make it permanent and remove temporary form.”
Kreyer said that seven of the seven eateries in the village city offer external food, something that many dinner and who benefit the village.
“It increases sales and food taxes by sitting 30% or more,” he said.
Creer said that aesthetics is the only complaint that the village has received about its external food, something that is also being addressed with formal standards and a permits process this year.
He said, “Kovid opens a lot of commuter space, so on the net we have increased the city’s parking by moving the commuter spaces and adding spaces to the right-offway, which was reduced earlier,” Said.
Kreyer said that the village is creating a permanent outdoor dining space using tax increment funding funding.
“And will include new businesses, such as sparrow coffee (on park and prospect avenue), will include it in his designs,” he said.
The remaining restaurant using a barricade parking area for food is Il Mio on 30S Prospect Avenue. Creyer stated that space presents a challenge that it does not provide a clear way to eliminate parking barricades in favor of a parklet. Village employees are working on a solution, but this possibility will not come till 2026.
Village Chairman Eric Tech said that outdoor food priorities in Clarendon Hills are “improvement and access to security”.
“I think outdoor food creates an atmosphere of a vibrant and desirable city. But, this is the time when we move beyond the solutions of the covid-era, such as solid obstacles, which are on the tollway, not on the streets of our village, ”he said. “We can prepare them with Tarps and other features, but at the end of the day, they are not keeping in mind the character we are trying to make in our city area.”
Tech said that the new village standard for outdoor dining would create “safe, accessible and attractive solutions”, which would be permanently part of the downtown cityscape.
“We will do this by increasing the city’s parking options,” he said.