Smoking space

Changes to accommodate additional outdoor eating/drinking/smoking areas along Massachusetts Street should be approached with caution.

It shouldn’t surprise city officials that some local eating and drinking establishments are looking for ways to get around the recently passed ban on smoking inside public places. Their businesses are suffering serious losses in sales.

It also should come as no surprise that some of those requests would be turned down, as was the Red Lyon Tavern’s plan to cut the front off its Massachusetts Street building to make room for an outdoor smoking area.

Although they denied the request last week, Lawrence city commissioners said they would explore changes to the city’s outdoor dining regulations to allow drinking establishments to create outdoor drinking and smoking areas on the city’s sidewalks.

Commissioners are right to be willing to look at the options, but as they consider any changes, they should pause to ask themselves whether they want downtown Lawrence to aspire to the atmosphere of Kansas City’s Country Club Plaza or look more like Manhattan’s Aggieville. Neither is necessarily bad, but they’re quite different.

Do we want Massachusetts Street lined with outdoor eating/drinking/smoking areas that encourage large, perhaps unruly, crowds to spill into the sidewalks or even the street? The existing outdoor seating areas already impede pedestrian traffic in some areas.

City commissioners shouldn’t be unsympathetic to the situation the smoking ban created for some businesses, but they need to be sure whatever cure they come up with doesn’t adversely affect the atmosphere of downtown Lawrence.