Noblesville DORA: City to open legal outdoor drinking zone this week

NOBLESVILLE Ind. — Noblesville will open a DORA, or designated outdoor refreshment area, later this week.

Preparations are already underway in Noblesville as the city’s brand-new DORA zone is set to launch on Friday.

“It’s a real big deal, we have been working on this for a long time,” said Aaron Head, the community engagement manager for the City of Noblesville.

As part of the DORA, people 21 and older can buy alcohol at participating businesses and walk around outside with it in a specially labeled cup within the designated area.

“It really opens up opportunities for our small businesses, it gets more tourism and traffic into our downtown, more foot traffic and more people coming downtown and frequent our shops and spending more money here,” said Head.

The city of Noblesville bought 10,000 customized cups ahead of Friday’s launch. Restaurant owners said the new DORA district will not only be good for business but for the city too.

“Downtown is really vibrant, it really is,” said Sladan Stanisic with the Nesst Steakhouse. “People come out and shop, we have wonderful shops. I think it will be beneficial for them very much so because you’ll be able to actually get a drink from a business like ours and others and actually go shopping.”

Meanwhile in Zionsville, the town council just introduced plans this week to create its own DORA around the town’s historic village.

If approved, similar rules would apply. People would only be allowed to carry plastic cups with the approved logos within the DORA boundaries.

A welcome option many told us can’t come soon enough.

“I think its great,” said Phil Vorndran, who was visiting Zionsville Wednesday evening. “With Indianapolis’ infrastructure and where we’re trying to head, we need to do stuff like this to keep up with everybody else. When you look at neighboring cities or major cities like Louisville and Nashville, people that bring in more exciting downtown life, we’ve got to be able to keep up with that. Because we’ve got a lot of stuff to show off here and I think it’s good.”

For more information on the DORA in Noblesville, click here .

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