Public Spaces

Laramie Main Street is partnering with the City of Laramie to enhance opportunities for retail and outdoor dining downtown as part of a series of innovative Covid recovery strategies for 2021. This includes the installation of hand sanitizer stations throughout the district, opportunities for sidewalk sales and outdoor dinning, expanded seating at the First Street Plaza, a temporary public seating area at the Hollyhock mural, and temporary open container area for the district.

Parklets AKA People Spots

An article from National Main Street, summarized below, discussed the impacts of adding Parklets to downtowns.

Economic Impact

Expanded space for customer use, e.g. seating, sidewalk sales
Increased foot and bike traffic and attraction of customers
Opportunity for multi-business collaboration and shared revenue

Health

Physically separated space from automobile traffic and other people
Increased options for seating and places for rest
Encouragement of walking, biking, and rolling

Community Building

Expanded opportunities for safe social gathering
Sense of social cohesion and ownership of public space
Opportunity to create hyper-local amenities that reflect local interest and culture

Parking

Many cities, towns, and neighborhood associations have measured the economic and community building impacts of parking versus parklets and have generally found that 1) parklets attract more customers on foot than would have used the parking space and 2) customers on foot tend to spend more time in the district and return more often than those traveling there by car.

Read more about parklets, open streets and design and public amenities in this series produced by National Main Street and AARP.

Open Container

Sept. 7 - Sept. 30, 2020

Thursday - Saturday 11 AM - 8 PM

Alcoholic beverages may be purchased from a retail liquor license holder, microbrewery, or winery and consumed within the downtown open container area, shown on the map below. Read the open container resolution here.

All purchases/service of alcohol must occur within the licensed premises
Drinks must be served in plastic cups or aluminum bottles
Open containers of alcohol are not permitted in vehicles or in the alleyways
Keep in clean Laramie, make sure your cup gets in a trash can!
Retailers can choose to allow, or not allow, beverages inside their storefronts (watch for signage)
Questions on Open Container?
Todd Freezer
Assistant City Manager
tfeezer@cityoflaramie.org
(307) 721-5304
Nancy Bartholomew
City Clerk
nancyb@cityoflaramie.org
(307) 721-5233

Look for these graphics in store windows:

Outdoor Dining Downtown

In addition to outdoor seating at the First Street Plaza and Hollyhock Commons, the following downtown restaurants are offering either temporary or permanent outdoor dining:

Hollyhock Commons

Starting Tuesday, July 28, Hollyhock Commons, will be a new temporary outdoor seating area at the Hollyhock mural at 2nd and Custer. This is a unique collaboration between the City of Laramie, Laramie Main Street, and the Laramie Public Art Coalition. Scheduled to be open through the end of the fall, the goal of this space is to encourage people to get take out or delivery from their favorite downtown restaurant and sit (socially distanced) outside with family or friends.

Thank you to The partners and volunteers who helped create Hollyhock Commons

Partner (Copy)

Visuals Sponsor (Copy)

Volunteer Table Builders (Copy)

Volunteers from Trihydro worked with the City Parks Dept. to build picnic tables. Flower boxes have been constructed by Centennial Woods. City staff intend to install Astroturf over the east side of the parking lot. Signs and sidewalk stencils are being created by Laramie artists in coordination with the Laramie Public Art Coalition with funding from Blue Federal Credit Union.

We hope people gather here safely for open air dining, safe socializing, and to support the 35+ locally owned bars and restaurants that call downtown home.

How this site was selected

The Hollyhock parking lot was selected because of its central location, ability to accommodate social distancing, and opportunity to scale up or down in size depending on use.

Other alternatives were evaluated but ruled out for a variety of reasons including safety, traffic disruption and maintenance costs. One option that was explored was a partial or complete closure of streets similar to neighboring communities in Colorado, but was ruled out because of parking concerns. Similarly, Depot Park was identified as a potential location, but the long-term placement of picnic tables on the grass would cause irreparable damage (such as loss of grass due to high traffic) and increased summertime park maintenance time and costs (such as moving tables to mow, etc.).