If you have or plan to open a Restaurant and you want Outdoor Eating to be a part of your restaurant it will likely need to be submitted to a governing body for approval before Outdoor Eating can be installed and utilized. For the City of Las Vegas and the Jurisdictions found around Las Vegas such as Clark County, North Las Vegas, and Henderson this submission will need to be made to the corresponding Planning & Zoning Department. There are some things to consider when looking into adding Outdoor Eating to your Restaurant.
Can your Site/Building have Outdoor Eating? – Sometimes the parcel itself is not allowed to have Outdoor Eating from a previous owner or a Jurisdiction wide policy. Beyond that your parcel may not be able to have Outdoor Eating due to landlord rules or if you are operating a chain the franchise may not allow you to have Outdoor Eating either. Finally your building or lot may not be compatible with Outdoor Eating to begin with. You or your hired Architect can determine whether or not the building/lot is compatible, then you will have to check with the above entities to see if it is allowed.
Outdoor Eating is allowed on my Site. How do I continue the Process? – SSA Architecture recommends having an Architect help to plan out the area and create a dimensioned plan for the area. With a plan in hand SSA typically recommends conducting a preliminary discussion with the Planning & Zoning Department to see what type of things need to be incorporated or removed from the plan/design. Typically these items to incorporate would be things like setbacks from the building, parking, or site boundary. Many times they will require that the eating area conform to certain design requirements. This preliminary discussion typically helps to keep comments on the eventual submission down to a minimum. If the plan and design don’t receive any comments once submitted the project should get through the overall process sooner. With the plan updated per the preliminary discussion it will be time to submit fully.
Submitting to Planning & Zoning – Submitting is different for each of the Jurisdictions around Las Vegas, but they all typically end up with your plan being submitted to the process and your submission having an assigned Planner. The assigned Planner will provide a final round of comments and will assign your project to the next step in the process. This next step can vary depending on how the Governing Body views the submission. By the end of this submission process your Outdoor Eating will either be Approved or Denied. Many times during this process the Planning & Zoning Department will have different meetings that need to be attended. During this time SSA typically recommends you either have the Architect or a specialized Lawyer attend the meetings to ensure they go over as smoothly as possible.
If you need more information about this process and some other topics similar to it, check out SSA Architecture’s Videos about Outdoor Eating. Check out the original video on the topic here or you can check out the update video that builds off of the original here.
