Regina restaurant ‘shocked’ after letter pokes holes in COVID workaround

The owners of Bar Willow Eatery, a Regina restaurant on the shores of Wascana Lake, say they were just trying to keep their business afloat when they got a potentially devastating letter from the city.

Bar Willow has a very small indoor space, but a large patio. To allow for the provincially mandated spacing between diners dictated by COVID-19 protocols, it has made a point of using its large patio space since summer.

The restaurant recently put up tents and heaters on the patio and was planning to leave them up all winter to allow more diners to enjoy meals throughout the colder months while allowing for proper social distancing.

“We’re just trying to be creative and inventive to try to stay afloat,” said James Taylor, one of the restaurant’s owners. “We have to do whatever you can to just scratch the surface and break even.”

He explained that this year has been tough for Bar Willow, even with the patio available. Taylor said he and his partners were talking about whether they’d be able to make it through the winter.

But another blow was coming. Taylor said last week they got a letter from the city detailing a lot of things that would need to be done before they could continue operation with the tents — things like a fire plan, engineering drawings, moving the tents away from the building, and getting permits and paying fees to the city.

Taylor said these are expensive requirements, and things they’ve never had to do before in the 16 years they’ve been using the tents on the patio. Taylor said the letter seemed like a cease-and-desist order.

“There was nothing in there about, ‘Hey, let’s try to work together, I know you guys are struggling, it’s hard times.’ It was just sort of a, ‘Stop now until you spend all this money on these drawings and permits,’ and then maybe we can do it again,” said Taylor.

He said it was shocking, that the owners felt they were getting kicked when they were down. He said this just isn’t a great time of year for more stress.

“Everybody’s worried about Christmas and are we going to keep people employed? Are they going to be able to keep families? And then things like this happen,” said Taylor.

With the new COVID restrictions, Taylor said the restaurant’s indoor space can only fit up to 20 people at a time, and without the patio space available, he’s not sure whether that would be enough to keep it going.

“Takeout and delivery only goes so far, and it’s been a pretty tough summer as it was, so I don’t know,” said Taylor.

After getting the letter, the restaurant outlined the situation in a post on Facebook. Taylor said the support has been great, with a couple of engineering firms reaching out to say they could help with the drawings.

Taylor said the owners since met with the city to try to work something out, and he’s hopeful they can work together. He made a point of saying this isn’t anyone’s fault, that the city workers are just trying to do their jobs.

Fred Searle, the director of planning and development services with the City of Regina, said anytime there’s a problem like this with a business, the department wants to work with them to figure something out.

“Certainly, our commitment to them through that process would be to work with them as expeditiously as possible so that they could continue long term with the tents,” said Searle.

He said he couldn’t speak to what has happened before with the tents and why no alarms were raised by city workers at those times. Searle said the city does understand the challenges the community is facing right now but it does have the “basics of public health and safety to consider.”

He explained the city wants to help people through the process and will consider alternatives if there’s an opportunity. Searle also said the restaurant owners were pointed to the city’s Economic Recovery Grant Program, meant to help businesses finance changes needed to deal with COVID restrictions.