Downtown Lexington restaurants arrange New Year's "do over" after Thursday evacuation

Downtown Lexington restaurants arrange New Year's "do over" after Thursday evacuation

Bomb scare in lexington last night cost bars and restaurants a lot of business in an already difficult year.

When people were evacuated...many of those businesses had to close early.

Abc 36's newest reporter danielle saitta spoke to one of those business owners.

Danielle....he's offering a "do over".

### vj...the owner of one of the city's newest bars says his restaurant was getting lots of business last night before police told him about a suspicious camper parked close by.

Immediately after---business owners on the street worked together with police to make sure everyone was safe.

### elixir downtown owner stephen scaldaferri...had plans new year's eve... to kick 2020 to the curb and kick off 2021 obviously everyone's taken a lot of bumps and bruises this year being the new kid on the block--elixir hosted a special new year's eve dinner to showcase itself... and according to scaldaferri it started off very successfully.

Our dinner reservations were starting some people were through their first or second course and then we had 20-25 that were on their way and a couple parties at the door unfortunately--the bar and it's patrons had to end the meal abruptly.

At 7:40 lexington pd noticed a suspicious rv parked in the lot across the street.

By 8pm...the restaurant had to stop seating people and start helping them evacuate to safety at that moment you don't have a lot of time to think it's just one of those things where everything stops immediately so it was more around making sure all of our guests got out and make sure all the rest of the building was cleared out by 10:30 police found the r-v's ownerse and confirmed it had no explosives with businesses required to stop alcohol service by 11 because of coronavirus--and several streets blocked off---owners like scaldaferri couldn't reopen.......a devastating blow not just to him...but also to his staff.

It was extremely hard on them--with times the way they are right now a lot of folks are struggling financially but the end of it all..business was not entirely lost for elixir with people making reservations to come back soon its nice to have the community support but we also need to support them and create a good environment for them and last night we created a safe environment for them and to make sure everyone got out and had rides home the bar says it's looking forward to toasting to 2021 following this unplanned end to 2020 no one could have predicted it but it's one of those things where it happened and you move forward ### tonight, elixir had a relaunch of its entire menu it had focused on for new year's eve.

It'll be doing the same menu saturday night to welcome in new business.

Reporting in studio... danielle saitta ###