This month, Portland unveiled the first outdoor cafe in its new Street Seats program, a venture that will convert on-street parking spaces into outdoor extensions of businesses. The first raised-platform seating was built outside Wafu on SE Division; by the end of the year, we’ll see up to 12 of these little spots spring up.
- CITY OF PORTLAND
- Wafu! Now offering dining between cars!
Street Seats is in the same vein as the transformation of SW Ankeny into a car-free outdoor cafe. And it raises the same issues over how we use our city’s streets: Is it a good idea to convert public right-of-way into private space? Twenty percent of Portland’s land area is public right-of-way including streets, sidewalks, and on-street parking, so conversion of that space into other uses bit by bit could have a big impact over time.
While Street Seats is modeled on resoundingly successful “parklet” programs in New York and San Francisco, those cities’ programs are different than Portland’s in a key way. After they convert parking spots to outdoor seating, those seats are public and cannot be used for commercial purposes. That means New York and SF businesses can’t restrict the space’s use to just their customers, offer table service, or allow people sitting in the street-side tables to drink alcohol. Portland’s new parking-spot-cafes will be reserved for use only by patrons of the restaurants sponsoring them.
The sponsor restaurants have to pony up some money for the new sidewalk cafe space. If the space was metered parking (like on SW Ankeny), the businesses have to pay the city the estimated lost revenue from the space. They also pay a $450 permit fee and bear all the cost of designing, building, and installing the cafe platforms. But in places without metered parking—like Wafu’s spot on Division—they don’t pay anything to lease the formerly-public land from the city.
“There’s a lack of places to sit and relax in our cities and a little too much space is dedicate to the use of the automobile,” says Matt Passmore, of Rebar, a San Francisco-based design firm that’s been a champion of parklets nationwide. But the private-space aspects of Portland’s program is troubling, he says. “If the city is giving the right to do commercial activity in the space and exclude people from that space, then the city should be charging market rate for that land. Otherwise, it’s a public subsidy for that restaurant.”
Portland Bureau of Transportation spokesman Dan Anderson notes, though, that the cafes will be used by more people daily than the parking spots were, making the land arguably more use to the general public. “Space in the right-of-way is no longer used for storing cars, but it really activates it for a lot more people. It was rare to have a person in the spaces [on SW Ankeny], except for someone who’s getting into or out of their car,” says Anderson. It’s a valid point—for someone who doesn’t own a car, the “public” parking space has always been restricted land. Instead of storing private vehicles on the public space, we’re storing private tables.
Making the space private has clear benefits to their small businesses sponsors, like being able to serve alcohol in the spots. “Business owners, in our dialogue with them about this pilot season, said serving alcohol was something they wanted. We’re all about helping businesses succeed,” says Anderson.
Portland Architecture editor and general smart guy Brian Libby strikes a middle-note on this debate. While he’s concerned in theory about the conversion of public space into private space, parking spots are not the type of public land that people want to occupy, anyway. Because there are so many parking spots in American cities, we can spare a few to become sidewalk cafes, he says, which will make the streets themselves more inviting to the public. “Putting in a few restuarant tables sounds like fun more than opening Pandora’s box,” says Libby. “Streets and freeways still dominate the built environment in the United States and it’s right to reclaim some of that space.”
love the idea.
however,
call me pessimistic and faithless in my fellow drivers (because i am), but, man, them chairs are pretty close to that road — cars going by at 25 or 30mph (if they’re following the law), within mere inches of chair-sitters.
i hope nobody gets a side-view mirror to the head.
Looks to me like this is just a bad accident waiting to happen.
Private business use in a public right-of-way. So, who carries the liability can if a bus clips that fence, four people end up in the hospital, and those people start looking for someone to sue? The City or Wafu? Division is somewhat narrow and definitely traffic busy during the hours this space is most likely to be used by Wafu customers.
If the bus hits a legally erected fence, the bus driver is at fault and Trimet is liable. As long as Wafu followed the rules, Trimet would be the only potentially liable party in that scenario.
Sounds like a great idea, as long as no one who sits there drove a car that they parked somewhere else.
I don’t care for this idea at all, much as I don’t care for the city closing down the bridges to all auto traffic in favor of bikes, or block parties that want to close down the street to public traffic.
I realize this opinion certainly won’t be popular in this forum, but hey – I bike too and love parties just as much as the next bloke.
I just don’t see why one has to inconvenience others to have a good time – and restricting public parking is an extension of this.
@frankieb, I bike and drive, and if there’s one thing drivers could use, it’s a reminder that 99.99999% of urban layout is centered around making driving cars ludicrously convenient, so 0.00001% inconvenience now and again is something to just suck up and STFU about.
For christ’s sake, they’re not closing streets – they’re closing A FEW PARKING SPOTS ON A FAIRLY MINOR ARTERIAL STREET, AND PAYING THE CITY FAIR MARKET VALUE FOR THE LOST PARKING.
I can understand the debate about SW Ankeny, because it is a narrow side street that actually could function as truly public space. But how successful would a tiny “parklet” alongside traffic on Division really be? Outdoor restaurant seating, on the other hand, is a perfect use for that space. Many years ago, they removed parking along Sandy in Hollywood to widen the sidewalks, and they put a bunch of benches on the edge of the sidewalk right next to the road. No one ever sits on those benches, because they are right next to speeding traffic. That should be an example to avoid.
I also think the issue of public vs. private is silly because the parking spaces were never public to begin with–they were used for the storage of private cars. Letting a business use it rather than a private car is just a different kind of subsidy, not a new subsidy. If people want the city to charge market rate for the business, the city should also charge market rate to every driver who parks on the street. Also, this article implies that Wafu does not pay the $450 permit fee–that is false, they do have to pay it.
If it’s able to be used by the public, such as a parking space is, it’s public, not private. That’s like saying a park bench becomes private property when someone sits down, or that laying down a blanket at a park makes that area of the park no longer private. It’s a fun little misdirection the BikePortland crowd likes to use when discussing parking. It’s a canard.
Btw, I’ve got no problem with this program. I’m not sure why someone would want to eat lunch on the street, but that’s neither here nor there.
Eating on the street provides maximum visibility. “LOOK WHERE I’M EATING!!” I’m sure these will soon be up and down Alberta too, so the tourists can occupy parking intended to be used for residents. I hope their bone marrow flavored ice cream tastes like biodiesel.
So Chuck, you are saying that a car is the same as a human being? I did not know that!
Let’s try this thought experiment: I have a sofa that I don’t have room for in my house, but there is plenty of room in that public park over there! I’ll just go set it down in the park. I’ll store it there when I’m not using it, and I’ll put a cover and lock on it so no one else can use it except for me. From time to time, I’ll go the park and sit on it. Maybe I’ll periodically move it to a different spot. This is all OK, right?
No, it’s not OK, because public space is for people, not people’s private stuff! You can’t store your things in a park, and if you could it would be reasonable to charge you for that privilege. It’s the same with cars and parking in the street. This is not a “canard” from the sinister bikeportland lobby, it’s just the definition of public space. Again: people, not objects. Your car is a privately-owned object, not a person. By the way, before you accuse me of hypocrisy, I think bikes should be charged for public bike parking too, albeit at a very low rate because they take up so little room and do not cause other externalities the way cars do.