Restaurant tents can help keep COVID-19 down or keep diners warn, but maybe not both

HUNTLEY – Tents are popping up next to restaurants across Huntley with the idea of keeping customers fed and businesses operating in face of a ban on indoor dining, ordered by the governor in an attempt to mitigate a worsening of the COVID-19 crisis.

Because of requirements set by the state to keep the tents from turning the outdoors into the indoors, the dining experience inside a tent won’t be warm and cozy but still will require parkas, hats and gloves.

That would occur if the tents are used as the state has prescribed, a situation relying mainly on the cooperation of the businesses being regulated, according to health and police officials.

The new restrictions were imposed on restaurants and bars on Saturday, Oct. 31, and basically prohibit dining, drinking, standing, and dancing indoors, where the virus is more easily spread. Potential customers can’t even stand inside while waiting for their outside tables to be readied.

Melaney Arnold, public information officer for the Illinois Department of Public Health, said the tents would have to be half-open to meet the restrictions. And with the metrics in McHenry County showing a growth of COVID-19 cases and a positivity rate for people being tested above 8%, the county is taking seriously all efforts to curtail the spread of the virus.

“Subject to any required municipal and/or local liquor commission restrictions and approval requirements, tents may be used for outdoor dining if at least two sides of the tent are open to allow airflow,” Arnold said. “If more than two sides of the tent are enclosed, this is considered indoors for purposes of the guidelines.”

While the rules may be clearly spelled out, how they will be enforced is more vague.
“Enforcement occurs first at the local level: local law enforcement and local health departments,” Arnold said.

In Huntley, that would be the Huntley Police Department and the McHenry County Health Department.
In response to an email from MyHuntleyNews.com, Police Chief Robert A. Porter indicated his department is counting on the restaurants and bars impacted by the new rules to police themselves.

“Our response, along with many law enforcement agencies and municipalities has been one that includes voluntary compliance and education,” Porter said. “Should we receive a complaint in regards to a specific business we would respond to the location and make sure that they are aware of the public health guidelines and mitigation rules currently in place. The matter would then be referred to the prospective health department.”

In McHenry County, Lindsey Salvatelli, the community information officer with the county’s health department, indicated that role would be filled by the department’s Division of Environmental Health.
But, like Porter, Salvatelli didn’t want to portray her department as an enforcer. She said while the department’s main function is to protect the public health, people within the department are sensitive to the situations business owners are finding themselves, trying whatever is possible to keep their doors open, serve their customers, employ their workers, and keep their entrepreneurial dreams alive, while waiting for the coronavirus crisis to end.

The county will act on complaints of any establishment trying to keep customers warm by running heaters inside tents with all walls tightly closed. An environmental health inspector will be dispatched to determine if the tent is in compliance, Salvatelli said.

If the inspector determines people are dining or drinking inside a non-compliant tent, he has the authority to order people to disperse and to fine owners of the facility. And while he can do that, Salvatelli said, no inspector has done so since the beginning of the pandemic last March.