By Donald Wittkowski
Hoping to liven up its culinary scene, Sea Isle City began allowing restaurants to offer outdoor dining in 2008 to attract more customers and create a more upscale ambiance in the downtown district.
By all accounts, café-style dining has proved immensely popular among summer tourists since then. It also allows restaurant customers to have drinks with their outdoor meals.
However, a new ordinance approved Aug. 14 by City Council that bans alcohol consumption on all public property in town has some worried that a strict interpretation of the law might extend to restaurant customers who have drinks while dining outdoors.
“Some folks thought we inadvertently created a problem there,” Council President Jack Gibson said.
As a result, Council is expected to “clarify” the ordinance by specifying that the alcohol ban would not apply to outdoor dining at local restaurants, Gibson said. A vote is expected at Tuesday’s Council meeting.
“To make it safe and absolutely sure that would never happen, we’re going to clarify it,” Gibson said.
Gibson noted that the city’s solicitor, Paul Baldini, wrote an opinion arguing that there is no need to revise the ordinance because he believes it does not threaten or discourage outdoor dining.
But others worry the law may contain some “interpretive flaws” the way it is written now, requiring new language to be inserted to avoid any possible confusion, Gibson explained.
“We are going to go through a process to make it absolutely clear,” he said.
The new ordinance extended the city’s ban on alcohol consumption and sales on all public property to include Excursion Park, Sea Isle’s main venue for concerts, shows and festivals. Previously, an exemption had been carved out for Excursion Park.
But the new ordinance now includes Excursion Park with the myriad other public sites and municipal buildings where alcohol is prohibited.
Before, there were limited circumstances where alcohol was allowed in Excursion Park. Only nonprofit organizations, including the Sea Isle City Chamber of Commerce and Revitalization, were allowed to serve alcohol during special events in Excursion Park if they had a city permit.
Council removed the alcohol exemption for Excursion Park as part of tighter security measures to protect the public during large festivals, shows and other special events that attract at least 1,000 people. Excursion Park is the city’s main hub for those types of events.
Depending on the event, temporary or permanent security measures could be put in place to improve public safety, including metal security barriers to protect people from ramming attacks by a vehicle. Cars and trucks have been used in a series of deadly terror attacks in the United States, Canada and Europe.
The citywide alcohol ban is supposed to apply only to public places and public buildings. But there is concern that it might also be interpreted to include drinking during outdoor dining at private restaurants, Gibson said.
Although many in Sea Isle initially greeted the idea with skepticism and suspicion, especially since it was paired with drinking, the experiment with outdoor dining is considered a great success 10 years later.
“I think it’s very popular. I think it’s very successful,” Gibson said.
Outdoor dining has helped to showcase Sea Isle’s culinary scene by attracting tourists from other towns. This summer has been strong for the local restaurants, Gibson noted.
“We have a classy group of restaurants,” he said.
