Clark County restaurant owners caught a long-awaited break Thursday afternoon when Gov. Jay Inslee announced that five Washington regions — including Clark County’s Southwest region — are eligible to move to Phase 2 of the state’s reopening plan, thanks to improved results on multiple COVID-19 tracking metrics.
Phase 2 will allow restaurants to resume indoor dining at 25 percent capacity, starting Sunday. For many restaurants, it will be their first opportunity to reopen their dining rooms since mid-November.
“That’ll allow me to get 75 people into my east side location, which is great,” said Jason Fish, who operates Main Event Sports Grill at two locations in Vancouver.
A handful of restaurants — including Main Event’s west side location — have already been able to reopen for indoor dining at 25 percent thanks to a rule that allows indoor restaurant spaces to be considered “outdoors” if they are sufficiently ventilated and can maintain a carbon dioxide concentration of less than 450 parts per million in the ambient air.
“The only difference for us now is we get to close the doors, and you don’t have to freeze while you’re in the restaurant,” said Mark Matthias, owner of Beaches Restaurant in Vancouver.
The temperature issue is especially important this weekend. A major snowstorm was predicted to begin hitting Clark County and the Portland region Thursday evening and continue through Saturday.
Phase 2 was initially announced to begin on Monday, meaning restaurants would still have to endure the elements if they wanted to try to capture Valentine’s Day business. When asked about that timing issue during the conference, Inslee replied that he would look into changing it, and later Thursday evening his deputy communications director Mike Faulk confirmed that the Phase 2 start date for restaurants had been moved up to Sunday.
Mychal Dynes, co-owner of Little Conejo in downtown Vancouver, said he didn’t plan to open for indoor dining during the snowstorm because his restaurant relies on a roll-up garage doors to provide sufficient ventilation, and the weather will make that untenable.
Matthias and Fish both said they’d play it by ear and see if they could manage to keep their indoor and outdoor tent spaces warm. Fish said his regular guests have been very supportive of Main Event so far, and he expected at least some of them would brave the weather if the restaurant is open.
“The new thing is going to be keeping the snow off the tent and keeping the tents sound,” he said.
The 25 percent threshold is a welcome improvement, but Fish, Dynes and Matthias all said they’re still going to be eagerly awaiting the as-yet-unannounced Phase 3, which they hope will raise the indoor capacity to at least 50 percent.
Not all restaurants will be able to make their operations pencil out at 25 percent, Matthias said, so some will likely opt to remain closed for the time being. And reopening is an expensive proposition, so owners are going to want to be confident that the region isn’t about to backslide into Phase 1 and shut down again.
“If the metrics go up again, for whatever reason, they will close restaurants again, he said. “So it’s kind of a 50-50 deal here. You’ve really got to think about if you want to reopen at 25 percent.”
