No dance floor, but dancing by yourself is fine as B.C. lifts restrictions on bars and clubs

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Vancouver’s notoriously rowdy Granville Street Entertainment District could rumble back to life as early as this weekend – with less entertainment and no dance floors, but perhaps more patios – after a number of provincial and municipal initiatives designed to help B.C.’s hard-hit hospitality industry received approval this week.

On Wednesday, the provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry released a new public order that allows bars and nightclubs to reopen immediately. A previous order had not included establishments that do not serve food and hold a “liquor primary” license.

It was an “oversight” says Jeff Guignard, executive director of the Alliance of Beverage Licensees (ABLE BC), explaining that nightclubs can now operate as lounges, although many won’t be operational until next week.

“There will be more couches, more seating areas and more table service,” he says. “You might see more plexiglass around bar counters and spaces filled in that makes it inconvenient to mingle and move around. There won’t be any dance floors, although there is nothing to prevent anyone from dancing by themselves.”

Although he doesn’t anticipate that people will return in anything close to the previous numbers, he says that for bar owners, this order “really makes the difference between guaranteed insolvency and potentially making a go of it."

He added: “Our members are quite concerned about doing this properly. No one can afford, financially or even emotionally, to go through this again.”

The new provincial order also removes the 50-per-cent capacity limits on all bars and restaurants. The overall number of patrons will continue to be capped at 50, groups remain limited to six people and the two-metre physical-distancing rules still apply. But this relaxed measure gives bars and restaurants more flexibility to determine how many people they can safely accommodate – which is often more than 50 per cent with modified seating arrangements and barriers between booths.

This also allows them to take full advantage of temporarily expanded patio spaces, which do not increase the maximum capacities under their regular licenses.

Live entertainment is one area that still needs to be clarified, Mr. Guignard says. The order allows for “background music,” which appears to preclude DJs, piano players and live bands.

“If there is a live band on stage, does that turn the background music into an event?” he asks. “Think about a place like The Roxy. The music is the experience. And how does this apply to an adult entertainment venue? Even if the performer is onstage, 10 feet away, coated in hand sanitizer and dancing in a cage, it’s still not allowed.”

“I’m cool with grey areas,” he adds, noting that at least things are moving in the right direction.

Meanwhile, the City of Vancouver has passed three new initiatives that will also cut through the red tape and help restaurants and bars get back to business. At a special meeting on Thursday, city council approved motions that will extend the temporary-patio-permit program to private property, waive the permit fees for the temporary patios and expand the capacity of establishments with liquor primary licenses.

The latter pertained to fire bylaws and was not related to the provincial order, Councillor Sarah Kirby-Yung explains.

“If you were a restaurant operating in Burnaby, you could have more patrons than a restaurant operating in a building of the same size in Vancouver. Our fire bylaws had not updated in a long time.”

She notes that 37 of the 81 applications for temporary patios have been approved since the process began last week. Another fourteen are under review. Among the 30 denied, some pertained to private property and will be re-evaluated.

“We’ve been hampered a bit by our own bylaws, but there is a desire to work through these issues,” she says.

“If there is a silver lining to the COVID cloud, it’s that it has given us an opportunity to be much more streamlined and business-friendly. We have to be. Otherwise, we will lose those small businesses and we certainly can’t afford that.”

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