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Colorado Springs restaurants resume indoor dining, fear the future

RESTAURANTS REOPEN

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) - While many southern Colorado counties are now allowing indoor dining at 25 percent capacity, some restaurants are opting to keep their dining rooms closed for now.

More than half of the counties in Colorado moved from level red COVID-19 restrictions to level orange Monday after Governor Jared Polis announced shrinking case numbers across the state.

Christina Frasca, owner of Panino's Italian Restaurant downtown, told KRDO she's hesitant to reopen for indoor dining after all of the ups and downs with restrictions since the pandemic started.

Panino's is currently open for outdoor dining, takeout and pick up as they continue to strategize their full reopening over the next couple weeks.

"We don't want to just reopen just to get shut down again, so we're trying to just figure out how this can be our forever open," she said. "It’s awful telling somebody that you don't have a place for them anymore. It's scary that we could go through the process of hiring people, training people, just to possibly have another shutdown and lay them off a third time.”

Other restaurants we spoke with Monday did reopen their dining rooms, but are still concerned for the future of their employees.

"Fortunately we haven't lost any staff and we're all excited to come back," said Eric Janssan, General Manager of Jose Muldoon's. "but they've been surviving off of unemployment and I know it's tough on them. Keeping indoor dining is essential to a lot of people who rely on this as their income."

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Julia Donovan

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