Area residents and visitors walk down Main Street during the Spring Street Beer Garden and Zelienople Open Air Market Thursday, Aug. 13, 2020. The Zelienople Area Business Association and borough had created the event to help local restaurants and businesses adapt in the aftermath of the COVID-19 outbreak. The well-attended open-air markets will return May 5. Butler Eagle file photo

ZELIENOPLE — Thursday open-air markets are poised to return this year.

They might look different, though.

Borough Council on Monday approved the Zelienople Area Business Administration’s request to hold the open-air markets between May 5 and Oct. 27, but did not approve a related request to erect tents in the Spring Street parking lot.

A motion to approve the permit failed to receive a second from any of the six members of council and as such died on the table.

The permit, according to borough manager Don Pepe, would have allowed the business administration — or ZABA — to put up tents in the Zelienople Municipal Parking Lot for six months.

And not just on Thursdays, either; the tents would have been up every day for half the year.

“The open-air market's approved. That's not a problem, the Thursday night events,” Pepe said. “We were just concerned about the tents. They wanted to take up some parking spaces for six months.”

Pepe said the request would have meant the elimination of five parking spaces in the lot.

“That doesn't sound like much, but I think that's one-quarter of the parking spaces in the entire lot, give or take a few,” he said. “We get hit all the time (with the complaint) ‘There's not enough parking.’”

Matthew Edwards, ZABA administrator, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

Pepe said the borough would be amenable to a new proposal from ZABA that limited the impact on parking in Zelienople, such as having the tents established only on Thursdays.

“Why have them inoperable if they're not really being used except for Thursday nights?” Pepe said. “It's not that we don't want to be helpful,” he said, but he thinks they first should look for an alternative.

Council on Monday also approved a request to establish an outdoor dining area on the sidewalk near Kaufman Tavern.

Pepe said the outdoor tables and chairs are a continuation of what certain businesses had done both in 2020 and in 2021.

“If you remember last year, because it had become pretty popular, a lot of businesses on Main Street started putting tables and chairs outside their businesses,” Pepe said.

The approval does not extend to all businesses in Zelienople, but only to the area near Kaufman, according to Pepe.