Like almost every town these days, local leaders have been scratching their heads to come up with ways to help downtown merchants, and mainly, restaurants get back in business as the region enters the second phase of opening back up. And in the case of dining venues, that means trying to maximize their outdoor seating capacity, which right now for many is just a narrow sidewalk.
The Town of Easton council decided they could help some of those businesses by closing down a block of a downtown street (Washington Street) which would provide an extra 25 feet of room for outdoor seating but also a safe place for the community to gather with plenty of social distancing to enjoy other retail stores, live music or other family fun programming.
For a few hours on select days, the Washington Street block in front of the Talbot Courthouse will almost instantly transform itself into a pedestrian mall. The town will be calling it the Washington Street Promenade.
We sat down with Ross Benincasa, director of Discover Easton, to get the details on how this might work for Easton and other towns.
This video is approximately three minutes in length.
Update (July 8, 2020) The Easton town council voted Wednesday afternoon to nix the Promenade project.
Alan Boisvert says
Great idea but isn’t this grossly unfair to vendors on the other streets downtown? Why not just convert all of downtown to pedestrian only? It would be so nice and quiet without all the unnecessarily noisy truck and motorcycles vying for attention. If nothing else, enact a noise ordinance. This is one noisy town.