Marrow pursues outdoor dining deck permit

By Grace Lovins

New butcher shop Marrow, 283 Hamilton Row in Birmingham, is pursuing an outdoor dining area for patrons and presented their application to the city’s planning board during the Wednesday, May 14, meeting.

Marrow, which opened in December, is a butcher shop and eatery featuring hot and cold sandwiches and burgers among other items. As written on their website, the shop also offers retail sales of fresh meat cuts, house-made deli meats, sausages, sundries, dry goods and takeout wine.

Preliminary plans showed an outdoor dining deck in the street with five tables and a total of 20 chairs. Per city planner Leah Blizinski, the deck would take up two parking spaces and slightly extend into the furnishing zone of the sidewalk to provide a ramp from the sidewalk to the deck.

If Marrow’s proposal were to be approved, the deck would be the fourth on the street behind Greek Islands, Birmingham Sushi and Commonwealth.

Pauline Knighton-Prueter, vice president of operations for Marrow, told the board that Marrow’s team had scaled back the design to take up only one parking space and the ’X’ next to it which allows room for cars to pull in and out of the parking space. The submitted plans, however, didn’t reflect the new concept which the board stated they would need to see if the shop continues to pursue the deck.

Board members also suggested Marrow consider switching from placing an outdoor dining deck in the street to utilizing the furnishing zone to place tables and chairs which would eliminate the need for a deck. Planning board chair Scott Clein indicated that while Marrow may have to lose some outdoor seats from their original proposal, using the sidewalk would alleviate any issues with occupying on-street parking spaces.

Because this was a pre-application discussion, no formal action was taken by the board. Board members provided feedback that Marrow talk with planning director Nick Dupuis to discuss the feasibility of using the sidewalk instead of installing a deck, sorting the design of how the deck would fit into the on-street parking spaces and, when the times comes in the process, return with images that show Marrow’s proposed deck in relation to the existing decks at other restaurants.