Restaurants, visitors spot police enforcing masks in Gulch, NASHVILLE, TN

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    NASHVILLE (WSMV) — Metro Police are going beyond Broadway making sure people are are following the mask mandate in other popular destinations in Nashville.

Police expanded focus beginning this weekend to enforcement on Broadway, Demonbreun St & the Gulch area with 30 officers asking people to wear a mask to slow the spread of COVID-19.

According to police, officers on Friday night enforcing the mask requirement gave more than 1,000 warnings and issued 9 citations and made one mask-related arrest.

Police said enhanced enforcement would continue Saturday afternoon and night.

“The pandemic’s not going to scare these bachelorettes away,” said Doug Ayres, General Manager at The Pub Nashville in the Gulch. “They’re coming, they’re here, they’re looking for something to do.”

Ayres is one of several Gulch restaurant managers NEWS4 spoke with saying they’re seeing more people coming to the Gulch.

Now with mask enforcement, police are following.

“We’re fine with them being here. It’s not scaring off my business, it’s still pretty busy,” said Ayres.

“We don’t don’t want to get citations while we’re here,” said tourist Kerri Underwood.

Underwood and her friend Marissa Hughes are visiting from North Carolina. They tell NEWS4 they came to the Gulch from Broadway, surprised to see police again with the same request.

“Someone stopped us cause we didn’t have them on and said hey girls you have to put them on or we’d get cited,” said Hughes now wearing a mask.

Ayres says he’s maintaining the COVID-19 guidelines and following the Metro Phase orders keeping capacity at 50 percent, asking customers to wear a mask until seated and everything sanitized, while still trying to make patrons happy with his food and the experience.

“It’s a balancing act between you got to have the tourists in but you can’t be full throttle with it,” he said.

Ayres says he thinks he’ll see more people come to the area after next week when his restaurant can stay open later with newly eased phase restrictions, even with police enforcing the mandate.

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