Restrictions Have Lifted On CT Restaurants. Is It Too Late?

CONNECTICUT — Gov. Ned Lamont announced Thursday, the state will eliminate all capacity restrictions on restaurants and other businesses come March 19.

Businesses and establishments standing to benefit from the new order on the very first day include retail, restaurants, libraries, personal services, museums, aquariums, zoos, offices, gyms, and personal services such as nail salons and tattoo parlors.

On March 29, capacity limits on early childhood classes will increase from 16 to 20. Beginning April 2, outdoor amusement parks can open, outdoor event venues can increase to a 50 percent capacity, and indoor stadiums can open at 10 percent capacity.

Notable by their absence on any of the reopening lists are bars with the "inability to provide the dining experience that is currently required," as described by David Lehman, commissioner of the state's Department of Economic and Community Development. He estimated about 300-400 establishments in the state match that definition, and will remain closed.

Lamont has not committed to a date when the bars could reopen, saying only he was "looking ahead to warmer weather."

Restaurants still have an 11 p.m. closing time and 8-person table capacity, but even with the restrictions bar set so low, many that have already closed their kitchens may not ultimately make it.

"My hope is — especially with this new round of (the Paycheck Protection Program) — that a lot of (restaurants) if not all of them, will reopen this spring," Lehman said.

For many restaurateurs, the geometry still doesn't work. Loosened capacity restrictions won't help if the social distancing rules remain in effect, as they will. For these smaller venues, maintaining six-feet of space among patrons may effectively limit capacity to 50 percent, without even needing a separate rule in place.

But the eateries who opted to install plexiglass barriers early on, like the Little Pig who built his house from bricks, stand to reap a big benefit. They could possibly double their patronage on any given night compared to what they are currently netting.

As for how many restaurants have already shuttered, it depends upon your definition of the word. Many are just "hibernating," with staff on leave or furlough waiting for their phone to ring. Before the pandemic, restaurants accounted for more than 160,000 jobs in the state, according to Scott Dolch, president of the Connecticut Restaurant Association.

"To get back to that point, the state will need to fully lift the curfew, limits on table sizes and more. It can do it safely by maintaining social distancing and mask rules, along with other safety precautions," Dolch wrote in a letter to Lamont on Thursday.

According to Lehman, "a significant percentage — close to 10 percent (of the roughly 8,000 restaurants in the state) if not more — have stopped ordering food." The commissioner said he won't know the full extent of permanent closures until the pandemic is over, and he can see who reopens.

Another determining factor in those reopenings will be consumer confidence, Lehman said.

"As we see vaccinations go up, and virus transmission and hospitalizations go down, the consumers will be more confident and more willing to go to that restaurant."

Although the future looks much brighter today for Connecticut business than it did a week ago, there is always the chance — as has already occurred during the pandemic — that conditions could get worse, infections increase, and we backslide into the old restrictions. As he did during the height of the pandemic, the governor said he would use hospitalizations as his primary metric to determine when to bring the hammer back down. On Wednesday, that number was the lowest it has been in four months.

A new wrinkle, however, is the effect the coronavirus variants could have on the spread. The state Department of Public Health identified another 21 cases of the U.K. coronavirus variant last week, bringing the total variant cases identified in Connecticut to 63. On Thursday, Lamont referred to these as "the last wild card in the deck." State health officials are monitoring variant-triggered infection spikes in Miami and San Diego, Lamont said, but overall were feeling "pretty confident."

"We can only reopen because the people of Connecticut have been smart for the last six months and have allowed us to get some control over the spread of this virus," the governor said.