Nov. 29--Mary Jane Abbott is spending about $4,000 at her bar to create a new room that most of her customers might not step

foot in.

It's a non-smoking section that, after Monday, will be separated from the bar area by a sliding-glass door. Abbott has met with Lynchburg health department and building inspection officials to make sure it meets Virginia's new regulations on restaurant smoking so that her customers can still smoke.

Most of her customers light up. If they don't, they sit at the bar next to smokers anyway, she said.

"The room probably will never be used," Abbott said. "I have a lot of people that come in here and drink and don't smoke. I tease them and say they have to go into the back room. And they say, 'I'm not going back in there.'"

Abbott, a nonsmoker who says cigarette smoke does not bother her, is one of a few restaurant owners in the Lynchburg area making structural changes so that smoking can still be allowed.

This year, Virginia's General Assembly passed new regulations on smoking in restaurants. This was the third year in which Gov. Timothy M. Kaine sought to ban smoking in eateries.

The new regulations take effect Tuesday and ban smoking in restaurants except in smoking areas that are separated from non-smoking areas and have separate ventilation systems and entrances.

People who smoke in non-smoking areas, and restaurant owners who allow it, could be hit with $25 fines. A repeat-offender restaurant could lose its license to serve alcohol, but its permit to serve food would not be affected.

The regulations are causing changes at only a small number of restaurants in the Lynchburg area. Of about 459 restaurants in the region, about 70 of them, or 15 percent, allow indoor smoking, Central Virginia Health District records show.

Steven Simpson, environmental health manager for the Central Virginia Health District, said many of those restaurants have chosen to go smoke free once the new rules take effect.

Abbott said there was little choice for her. She has run Mary Jane's Cafe on Kemper Street since 1971. She knows her customers. The deep ashtrays at every seat at the bar are not just for decoration.

"I think I would have gone out of business," she said. "I have an older crowd. They'd stay home before they would come (to a non-smoking bar). Especially when there's other places that you can smoke in."

Those other places would include private clubs and bars or restaurants that have smoking sections.

In April, Abbott protested to get the attention of Kaine, who had come to Kemper Street Station to give support to expanding passenger rail in the state. Abbott carried a sign reading, "Kaine Please Help Small Bars."

She wanted the law to exempt small bars because people don't go there if smoke bothers them, and they don't bring their kids.

After protesting the change, she got to work to separate the nonsmoking area. "I never hesitated. I knew that I couldn't make it if I didn't do it," she said.

About midway through the restaurant is a wall with a large door-less opening in it. Abbott expects a sliding glass door to be installed Monday.

She had a new entrance cut into that half of the restaurant. A no-smoking sign is on the door.

While the smoking section of the bar is decorated with hundreds of beer taps, the non-smoking section's walls are plastered with pictures.

Abbott said that if the room ever gets used, it probably would be when people get off of the trains and buses at Kemper Street Station and look for something to eat. For the most part, though, she expects people to come in looking for a beer and a smoke.

Renovations also are under way at Cattle Annie's, a popular club in Lynchburg, to create a legal smoking section. The club portion will be separated from the restaurant portion, which will be non-smoking.

The renovations will not be complete by Tuesday, which means both the club and the restaurant will be smoke-free until the renovations are done, said manager Gary Shotwell.

He said Cattle Annie's was planning on the renovations before the smoking ban passed.

For Eddie Eagle, owner of the Texas Inn in downtown Lynchburg, the smoking ban is a relief.

The diner is so small that there is no way to

create a separate smoking section. Although Eagle would rather not inhale secondhand smoke all day, the restaurant has always allowed it. "It definitely would have been a lot harder to just say, 'hey, we're not going to smoke,'" he said.

"I know a lot of our customers that come in here probably will have more trouble with (the ban) than me," Eagle said. "It's going to be a lot of people that are going to raise some Cain about it. ... Especially here at the night time."

Wells Duffy, nonsmoking owner of the Cavalier on Rivermont Avenue, thinks much less highly of the smoking ban.

Only a few of his restaurant's customers smoke. When they do light up, the kitchen's exhaust fan pulls most of the smoke out of the building, he said.

The smoking ban takes rights away from his smoking customers, Duffy said. "I don't know how the government can get away with it," he said.

Duffy briefly entertained the idea of turning the Cavalier into a private club so it would be exempt. He dropped that idea. "It's probably too much trouble. ... I'm not really a private club," he said.

He has no real option except to prohibit smoking on Tuesday and see whether it affects his business, he said. "Everybody's pretty much used to the idea now. I'll just wait and see what happens."

Advocates of the restaurant smoking ban have said that banning smoking does not harm business, but rather it helps.

That is something La Carretta has seen. The restaurant chain's Timberlake Road location went non-smoking in April.

"The first two months, (business) dropped a little bit, ... but over the months we've actually gained 10 to 20 percent more business," said manager Jesse Aguirre. Now that customers do not linger to smoke after eating, the restaurant can serve more customers, Aguirre said.

Of the six La Carretta restaurants, only the Forest location will still allow smoking because its smoking section meets the new requirements.

At Mary Jane's Cafe, whatever economic benefits could come from the nonsmoking section don't matter a lot, especially while Abbott is paying for the $4,000 changes.

Customer Gary Farrar said that's money that Abbott doesn't really have, but she's spending it to take care of customers and to comply with the law. "It's a small, locally owned bar with an owner who's trying to make a living," he said. "She might not make a nickel on the new people who might come in here because they can go nonsmoking."

Abbott agreed. She said her profit comes from the regular customers she has served for years. "You make more money on the guy who comes in here every day than you do on the guy who comes in once a month and spends more money."

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