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Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration outlines Chicago’s rules for outdoor dining, office capacity under next phase of city’s coronavirus reopening

With desperate Chicago restaurants set to be allowed to host outdoor diners within weeks under the next phase of Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s coronavirus reopening plan, city officials are still trying to come up with a process so many of them can legally do so.

Speaking to reporters Wednesday about the Lightfoot administration’s phase three industry guidelines, Commissioner Rosa Escareno of the Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection urged restaurateurs to apply for the city’s existing sidewalk cafe permits. The annual permits must be renewed each year and start at $600.

“Our office actually has continued to operate, and we have continually processed sidewalk cafe permits, and we encourage restaurants who are interested in that permit to certainly come to our website or call us, and we are definitely continuing that process,” Escareno said during a conference call with reporters.

As Illinois and Chicago wait to reopen in the coming days and weeks, coronavirus deaths in the state surpassed 5,000 on Wednesday.

State officials announced 160 additional deaths, for a statewide death toll that now stands at 5,083. Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who held his daily news briefing in East St. Louis, also announced 1,111 new known cases of the coronavirus in the state, which pushes the statewide total to 114,306 known cases since the pandemic began earlier this year.

Laboratories in the state reported conducting 17,179 COVID-19 tests in a 24-hour period, for a total of 803,973 tests to date.

Lightfoot has said the city likely will move to the next phase of reopening in early June, meaning many offices, day care centers, retailers and gyms also will open with new rules about cleanliness, face coverings and capacity. The administration has dubbed the third phase “Cautiously Reopen.”

Though Lightfoot has said she expects Chicago to enter that step in early June, she has not yet announced a date. Her guidelines follow Pritzker’s release of statewide guidelines as the rest of the state outside Chicago is on pace to advance to phase three on Friday. Lightfoot has the authority to set stricter rules for Chicago than Pritzker’s statewide framework, but she can’t enact looser ones.

Not included in the plan Lightfoot’s administration released late Tuesday are guidelines for reopening sporting events, bars, religious services, outdoor performances, summer programs and youth activities, the lakefront and museums. Those standards “will be available later in phase three when those entities are predicted to begin reopening,” according to the release.

Restaurants will face some of the toughest new restrictions, with dining in relegated only to areas deemed outdoors, including spots where large doors or windows can be pulled open with tables set inside near the openings.

But for many of the city’s thousands of restaurants, qualifying for a permit to host patio seating will be the only way to legally serve dine-in customers under the new rules.

Isaac Reichman, spokesman for the Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection, said the department is working to accommodate them.

“The city is working on a temporary, more streamlined process to ensure restaurants have the proper permits they need to operate outdoors under phase three of the reopening,” Reichman said in a statement. “We will be providing more details in the coming days.”

As for bathroom access at restaurants, Illinois Restaurant Association President Sam Toia said diners will need to mask themselves to do so.

“When they do have to go to the bathroom, obviously they can,” Toia said. “They’re gonna have to — if they’re eating, they take their mask off. They have to put their mask on to go to the bathroom, and then when they get back to the table to eat again, obviously they can take their mask off.”

The next phase also will see the reopening of downtown offices and nonessential retailers, which Deputy Mayor Samir Mayekar said will bring about 130,000 employees back into the city’s workforce out of the roughly 300,000 he said have been “unable to work” since the pandemic hit.

Though those settings will only be allowed to operate at 25% capacity in Chicago, the potential surge in commuters on city trains and buses has the city preparing to add capacity to help people spread out in the cramped interiors.

“We have all kinds of ways that people are used to coming into the Loop and other economic centers,” said Gia Biagi, commissioner of the city Department of Transportation. “And so we’re looking at how we can add capacity to the system, whether that’s additional buses, whether that’s looking at additional bus rapid transit lanes, looking at additional train cars.”

Biagi also said companies are being encouraged to stagger employees’ shifts at offices around the city.

Michael Cornicelli, executive vice president at the Building Owners and Managers Association of Chicago, said companies in offices will work out ways to adapt to the new capacity restrictions.

“You’re seeing suggestions of they consider staggered hours, whether that is some people start at 8 o’clock, 9 o’clock, 10 o’clock and leave accordingly,” Cornicelli said. “In other cases, people might be working Mondays and Tuesdays, then they have half the workforce Monday and Tuesday, the other half come in on the two other days that week, and everybody works from home on Fridays.”

Chicago Tribune’s Jamie Munks contributed.

jebyrne@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @_johnbyrne