“I’m cautiously optimistic...I think it’s a lot stronger than last year [at this time]. We’ll see what summer does,” she said.

Thieringer added that she had heard from local hotels that they have fewer vacancies.

Indeed, Manoj Nayak, the assistant manager of J. August, a store that sells Harvard merchandise, said more tourists were stopping by.

“After Sept. 11 [business was] terrible because of tourists. [But] this year is a little better than last,” he said.

J. August Manager Dimitri Tragos added that the weakness of the dollar had also been helping sales since it made his goods cheaper for foreigners.

LATE-NIGHT DINING

Students, not tourists, are the customers that John DiGiovanni hopes to attract by extending the hours of eateries in the Garage.

On May 27, in a meeting room in the basement of the Lombardi Municipal Building, the Cambridge License Commission unanimously approved his request to extend the hours of three restaurants to 2 a.m. on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights.

Jason Sweeney, the owner of the Ben and Jerry’s in the Garage, said the businesses that had received the extensions—Ben and Jerry’s, Boston Chowda and Formaggio Delicatessen—would extend their hours together in the “coming weeks.”

At the May 27 meeting, the License Commission also approved a request by the Grafton Street Pub and Grille to extend its closing time from 1 a.m. to 2 a.m.

At the meeting, Cambridge Licensing Commission Executive Director Richard V. Scali said the Commission had not extended the hours of a bar in the Square for 17 years.

“It’s a capped district. License times [are] frozen in the Square,” said James Rafferty, Grafton Street’s lawyer, who explained that the bar was able to bypass the cap by going directly to the City Council with its request before going to the Licensing Commission.

DiGiovanni and Peter Lee, the co-owner of Grafton Street, said the later hours were designed to respond to consumer demand.

But G. Pebble Gifford, the vice president of the HSDF, which opposed both DiGiovanni’s and Grafton Street’s requests, said the restaurants were just trying to salvage their sales.

“Retail stores are having a tough time,” she said. “The reason [the Commission] approved the request was they like to help businesses.”