GREENFIELD — After going “back to the drawing board,” city officials have decided to stick with their initial plan to prohibit parking spot use for outdoor dining along Main Street’s Borofsky Block this summer.

Ice Cream Alley at 221 Main St. and the Wild Roots eatery at 201 Main St. had used a combined three parking spaces, as well as a portion of their sidewalk, for customer tables and chairs since around the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. But Dani Letourneau, chief of staff for Mayor Roxann Wedegartner, said City Hall has upheld its decision to prohibit use of the spaces for dining after reconsidering it in the wake of informal appeals from the business owners.

“I hope you can appreciate the thought and work we put behind this decision and then revisiting it after your outreach,” Letourneau wrote in an email. Considerations, she explained, included the ongoing parking study and amount of parking revenue that would be lost without use of the spaces, labor costs to set up outdoor dining, how to handle setup fees, “trying to please every business (or at least displace all fairly)” and ensuring “customers have a happy, enjoyable visit” to Greenfield.

“This decision is now final,” Letourneau added.

She explained the businesses will be allowed to put out more tables and “spread east and west along the street, provided you do not put them right against the windows of the neighboring business.”

She mentioned the Fiske Avenue pocket park was completed in September, providing another location for visitors to sit. The city also plans to close Court Square on April 22 and once again set up chairs and tables for customers to enjoy their food and beverages.

Bryan Dolan, one of Ice Cream Alley’s four owners, said these alternatives are better than nothing, but the situation is far from ideal.

“Our space sort of developed a culture of its own,” he said inside his 150-square-foot business, which opened for the season on Friday, April 7. According to Dolan, Ice Cream Alley sold 25,000 ice cream cones last season.

Dolan mentioned the roughly 400-foot walk from his shop to Court Square is plenty of time for ice cream to melt in the summer sun. He also mentioned the Fiske Avenue pocket park is a nice space but “doesn’t have that culture that we’ve managed to cultivate.”

Attempts to contact Wild Roots owner Luke Eriksen were unsuccessful.

“Between them and us, we changed the tone of the whole street. People were really excited about it. People were using [the chairs and tables],” Dolan said. “I can’t think of a better way to use two parking spaces. The social value that you get out of that is so much greater than having two places to park a car.”

Reach Domenic Poli at: dpoli@recorder.com or 413-930-4120.

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