Daily Skiff

Issue date: 10/17/07 Section: News

Media Credit: Michael Bou-Nacklie Matt Tidwelo, a senior history major at the University of Texas Arlington, smokes a cigarette at the University Pub. Beginning in January, a new city ordinance will prohibit residents from smoking indoors at locations that get 70 percent of their profit from alcohol sales.

In Plano, it's a typical late night at Kelly's Eastside restaurant - typical, that is, since the city's smoking ban was enacted June 1.

Before then, Kelly's co-owner Carin Kelly said, the restaurant was host to a bustling late-night happy hour. These days, she said, the once-packed patio is only populated by a few non-smoking stragglers and the restaurant's employees.

In Arlington, Saltimbocca's Italian Bistro sits empty - the victim, its owner says, of Arlington's smoking ban.

"We had a pretty regular bar crowd," owner Brett Russell said. "You'd see the same faces night in and night out, and about 20 percent of those people smoked. That group stopped coming in after the ban started, and their friends went with them."

In Fort Worth, however, it remains to be seen whether the new smoking ban will leave restaurant owners tending to almost vacant establishments.

For restaurants in many neighboring cities, the bans have been an economic death knell, but given the timing of the Fort Worth ban and the city's location within the Metroplex, the outlook for local restaurants may be less dismal.

The ordinance, which was adopted Aug. 21, is not comprehensive - it doesn't ban smoking in all public places.

Several establishments are exempt from the ban, including bars, tobacco shops and certain hotel rooms. The exception that most concerns restaurateurs is bars.

Come Jan. 1, a business will be considered a bar in Fort Worth (and, thus, exempt from the ban) if it meets the qualifications set forth by the ordinance: "an establishment licensed by the state which has more than 70 percent of its annual gross sales from alcoholic beverages for consumption by guests on the premises."

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