Restaurants – along with a lot of other businesses and people – are being severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Most restaurants are small businesses run by entrepreneurs trying to create jobs in our neighborhoods, and they often employ people who are struggling to get by the most. But with needed restrictions in place on indoor dining to limit the spread of COVID-19, many restaurants are struggling to survive – 17% nationally have closed.
Recent announcements about outdoor dining in OTR and at The Banks have generated significant discussion, and begged the question of whether we should expand outdoor dining to other locations in the city, and if so, how? The short answer should be yes and urgently, but how this is done is important and there should be caveats.
First, any expansion of restaurants to outdoor public space should require that restaurants lease that space from the city at market rates on a square foot basis. Outdoor seating on sidewalks and/or parking spaces is public space – owned by the public. It’s only right that the restaurant pays a fair rate for that space just like they do indoor space, and with reduced public space that the public gets benefit from that.
Second, just like restaurants pay for "lease improvements" to the indoor area of a restaurant, if a restaurant wants to do an outdoor seating area, then they should be responsible for building out whatever that happens to be and maintaining it within some standards. There are plenty of examples from other cities of attractive outdoor seating that also is safe, particularly if it happens to be in what was a parking space.
But there should be other caveats.
First, due to the pandemic, it makes sense to waive any lease fees to the city for renting that public space for 2021.
Second, there needs to be a clear and fully transparent process for approval. That should start with restaurants communicating their interest to their respective community council and city at the same time. While community councils are imperfect, they are meant to be the voice of a neighborhood. After receiving all requests, the community council and city would then solicit community input. We recently completed such a process on Clifton Town Meeting with DOTE with a proposed Ludlow Avenue "Road Diet" that involved surveying the community, which was shared widely via email, flyers and social channels.
A robust process like that would enable concerns to be shared and experimentation, including different neighborhoods exploring their own solutions. For example, some neighborhoods may want to use adjacent lots versus sidewalks with a smaller footprint. Once that process is completed with community support, then a quick and transparent approval process should follow for permits by city management with consistent fee structures across neighborhoods. A reasonable approach to enable experimentation would also be to make this a two- or three-year experiment – let’s see what the impact could be for restaurants and neighborhoods before making it permanent.
Expanding outdoor seating for restaurants has clear short and long-term benefits. There is a short-term benefit for small businesses to survive during the pandemic, protect as many of the jobs of fellow Cincinnatians as possible and ensure we don’t have boarded up storefronts in our neighborhoods. It also affords us an opportunity to build an even more vibrant city longer term.
From Westwood to Avondale to Mount Washington, it’s even more inviting to sit outside or stroll along streets where neighbors have more opportunities to connect with neighbors outdoors, and local restaurants in all 52 neighborhoods are thriving. That’s the Cincinnati we should build. Now is the time to make it happen in a fair and methodical way together.
Mark Jeffreys is a resident of Clifton, elected trustee of Clifton Town Meeting and candidate for Cincinnati City Council in 2021.
Source link
