[6] The Mayor stated that expanded outdoor dining brought at least 400,000 patrons downtown
to utilize the seating. Apparently this was based on Mr. Chen’s 2021 barrier study. And these
patrons created millions of dollars of revenue for the city.
[7] Based on the data gathered by Mr. Chen, the average number of people per restaurant using
outdoor seating is 10.8. This number is based on adding the total number of outdoor seats
utilized from the raw data - 9700 outdoor seaters in July and August for 39 days of data
gathered for 23 restaurants that had expanded outdoor dining.
[8] It is important to note that some of that outdoor seating capacity already existed as
Downtown Nashua has had outdoor seating for years.
[9] It does not appear that 400,000 came downtown for expanded outdoor dining. Even if one
extrapolated 9700 outdoor seats utilized for 2 months and ran the numbers out for 8 months,
that would result in under 40,000 outdoor diners. If each person spent on average $75.00, the
revenue would be approximately $3,000,000 in sales, not millions of dollars of additional
revenue. Mind you, we have no idea what typical outdoor dining has generated because the City
collected no data.
[10] The Barrier Report is as follows:
Barrier Report— Alex Chen 8-12-2021 and the Mayor’s State of the City remarks:
While talking to businesses, patrons, and individuals simply walking
through downtown, I have gained some insights into how everyone
views the outdoor seating. The biggest proponents of the outdoorseating were not
the restaurants with this additional seating, but the people who were using it. Aftertalking to
hundreds of people, the large majority of the downtown population and those who frequent it
love the outdoor seating. I have listened to people rant about how amazing it is
to have endlessly, with occasional comments about traffic being a little worse
but not unbearable, the inside of the barriers needing to be painted as beautifully as the
outside of the barriers, and suggestions about
which restaurants need more space for it and which need less. Every day at lpm, 3pm,
5pm, and 7pm, I have kept track of how
many people were sitting outside at eachrestaurant. The following
are some key points from that data, and the data collected from talking to the downtown
merchants.
- The overall average number of people
using the outdoor seating at any given time is 68 people, but thatfluctuates heavily depending on
the time of day, and the day itself.
¢ At 7pm on July 10th there were 264 people sitting outside, then the following afternoon at
lpm there were only 6.
