As of last Friday, you can openly drink beer anywhere on Market Square without so much as a furtive glance over your shoulder.
A pilot program has made Market Square a temporary Designated Outdoor Refreshment Area (DORA), meaning customers of participating businesses may now take their drinks for a little stroll from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily.
We headed downtown Sunday afternoon for a late lunch at The Brass Pearl …
… followed by some hard-hitting field research. Such is the call of investigative journalism duty sometimes.
How does DORA work, exactly?
Well, you walk into a participating business, as indicated by a decal on the door …
… head to the bar, show your ID and order a beer as you ordinarily would, only this one comes in a container bearing a DORA sticker (at no additional cost). You can then enjoy it there or venture forth into the relatively immediate outside world, now a sort of extended patio.
The rules, posted at either end of Market Square, are fairly straightforward.
Stickers on the sidewalk mark where the DORA begins and ends.
At the moment, participating businesses include Tomato Head; the Wests’ four Market Square bars (Tommy Trent’s, Scruffy City Hall, Preservation Pub and Bernadette’s); and Fred’s Around the Corner on Union Avenue. The DORA extends west along the sidewalk to Walnut Street and wraps around the Market Square Garage, although a sign warns that you may not take your beverage inside.
The fine print:
- DORA drinks can’t travel from one business to another, even when their patios sit side by side, as with the Wests’ row of bars. It’s not a DORA rule: The Alcoholic Beverage Commission and the City treat each patio as a separate premises, divided by a sort of invisible legal wall.
- For now, only beer may venture beyond the premises. Wine and liquor will join the party once the remaining permits are finalized.
More businesses are expected to opt in, although my casual survey of Square restaurants suggested some won’t. One concern is liability, should a restaurant serve some rando that proverbial “one last drink” before they head back out and get into trouble. Another is that non-diners walking in and out could disrupt ambience.
(On a graphic design tangent: “bottle cap as Sunsphere” was RIGHT THERE. Here are some examples of DORA logos from other cities, just reminding that good design matters and is worth investing in.)
Anyway, back to the moment: we’ve got our DORA beers in their special DORA cups. Now what?
Being a quiet Sunday afternoon there wasn’t much happening on the Square, so we mostly wandered around aimlessly. It didn’t deliver quite the illicit little thrill of strolling through Savannah or New Orleans with an open container, maybe because Market Square feels so contained, or perhaps because we’ve done it so many times, starting with Sundown in the City.
But I can see DORA coming into its own when the program is filled out and the Square is bustling. I wouldn’t mind a “go-mosa” while perusing the Farmers Market, or a cocktail while watching a performance on the stage.
Scott West wasn’t surprised by my report of the pilot program’s low-key debut.
“I expect the beginning to be innocuous and quiet,” he said. “The real use of DORA is going to happen when big events are occurring, be they at Neyland Stadium or downtown or on Market Square, when people are visiting Market Square in large groups.”
At the same meeting at which City Council approved the Market Square DORA, it also approved a separate DORA for Covenant Health Park. The stadium district followed a different approval process, but I suspect it helped force the issue. You can’t exactly wave through a DORA for the shiny new stadium while stiff-arming Market Square, which has been asking for one for years. I hope the Old City is in that conversation as well.
Presently, Iron Forge Brewing Company is currently the only outward-facing alcohol-serving business relevant to the stadium DORA, and it is awaiting its permit. More are on the way, including Knox-Quila Cantina, a Mexican restaurant and tequila bar planned near the west entrance of the Beauford Delaney Building, and Jonathan’s Grille, a Nashville-based sports bar planned across Patton Street from the Delaney Building—outside the stadium proper footprint, yet included within the DORA.
I’ll leave all that here for now. Cheers!