Government

Outdoor seating planned for summer at Andy’s in Greenport

Andy’s restaurant on 34 Front St. in Greenport received site plan approval to allow outdoor dining in the back part of the property during the summer months at last Thursday’s Greenport Village Planning Board meeting.

The restaurant, owned by Greenport Village Trustee Doug Roberts and Andy Harbin, opened last year in the former Rhumbline building, which was vacant at the time.

The plans approved last spring did not show dining in the rear of the building, toward Adams Street. However, Mr. Roberts said at the second meeting before the village Planning Board in May that if all goes well with the restaurant they may revisit the board in 2018 to seek approval on using the back portion of the building for dining.

And they did.

“We’re doing all right,” Mr. Roberts said in a recent interview. “Go look at Yelp and all that stuff … we are doing all right.”

The proposal to use the back portion of the building came before the village Planning Board on Feb. 22 in what’s called a “pre-submission conference” on the application. No one from the public spoke for or against the proposal.

The board then voted to approve the site plan at the March 1 meeting.

The plans show six tables with four seats each, along with five other seats, for a total of 29.

“Last year, we didn’t want to take on too much as we launched the business,” Mr. Roberts said.

“My one concern, being that it’s an outdoor area, is that it doesn’t become a place where everyone is standing around drinking,” board member Walter Foote said at the Feb. 22 Planning Board meeting.

The back portion is intended to be an extension of the dining area, said Rob Brown, the architect representing Andy’s. He said an existing dilapidated bar in the back, which Rhumbline brought in, will be removed.

“We’re not putting a bar back there, just an extension of the dining room,” Mr. Roberts reiterated.

“It will still be fenced in, but we are going to make it more of a picket fence kind of a feel. It will be very much a closed-off space from the street that you can see into, like a patio/café kind of thing,” he said.

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