“Smoking or nonsmoking?” is often the first question Lawrence diners hear upon entering a restaurant. It might soon be replaced with a new query:

“Indoors or outdoors?”

City officials say the city’s new ban on indoor smoking, which takes effect July 1, has sparked a surge in requests for permits to install outdoor dining areas at Lawrence bars and restaurants. At the same time, some business owners want the city to ease rules regulating sidewalk dining.

“People who are smokers, they can stay in the business and still go outside to smoke,” Nick Carroll, who co-owns two downtown bars, said of outdoor dining areas. “Otherwise, customers may not come back to the establishment.”

But Mayor Mike Rundle said he was not sure the smoking ban would create hardship for bars and restaurants. He wants that information before changing the outdoor dining rules.

“I’m kind of wanting to wait and see,” he said.

The city’s smoking ordinance, based on one in place in El Paso, Texas, would prohibit smoking “in all enclosed facilities within a place of employment without exception.” Violation would be a misdemeanor crime.

Combined with smoking restrictions passed in 1987, the ordinance would ban smoking nearly everywhere in Lawrence except private homes, smoke shops, some hotel rooms and open-air patios like those already in place at Replay Lounge, 946 Mass., and Free State Brewing Co., 636 Mass.

Planning Director Linda Finger said this week the ban had prompted Lawrence bar and restaurant owners, who are worried the ban will hurt their business, to consider whether they should create outdoor dining areas.

“That’s what consultants and architects are telling us,” she said. “They’re hearing from individuals who want to know what their options are.”

In fact, she said, the rush is on.

“We’ve had three outside dining (requests) downtown,” she said. “We’ve got a deck request at Frontier Road and Mesa Way. I’m told there may be two more.”

Hoops to jump

One of those requests is from Jefferson’s owner Jeff Webb, who wants to add seating in front of his downtown Lawrence restaurant. It’s just a coincidence that the request comes as the smoking ban is about to take effect, he said.

“We’ve been thinking about it two or three years,” Webb said. “If the smoking ban goes into effect, great. We’ll be able to serve those people.”

There are hoops to jump through, however. City codes require a business to make 70 percent of its income in food to have a sidewalk dining area downtown — a provision that essentially prohibits bars from using the sidewalks. And installing a deck or building a patio requires review from the city’s Planning Department.

It’s only fair, Carroll said, for the city to make it easier for businesses to operate outdoors. He owns The Replay and wants an outdoor area for his new bar across Massachusetts Street, Jackpot Saloon. Neither establishment serves food.

‘Important for survival’

“Now the only places that can have smoking and outdoor patios (on sidewalks) are places that do food,” Carroll said. “We feel that having a smoking patio may be important for survival in some locations.”

Rundle disagreed. Any change, he said, will wait until the ban has been in place several months.

“I think it’s premature to start rushing to solve problems, when so far we don’t really know if they’re going to be realized,” Rundle said.

Opponents of the ban, meanwhile, still are working on plans to circulate a petition to force a citywide referendum on the smoking issue, perhaps in November. A “kickoff” event is expected soon, Carroll said Thursday, and will be announced publicly when it is scheduled.

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