THERE’S A HOT new place to eat ramen in town—between two cars, where SE Division eatery Wafu has converted a parking spot into a raised platform that’s a nifty outdoor extension of its café.
Under a new city program, “Street Seats,” 15 parking-spot-to-restaurant-seating transformations are slated to pop up by the end of the year (the second has already sprung up outside the Pearl District’s Oven and Shaker). But while the program aims to help small businesses and make streets more pedestrian friendly, it also raises questions about the best use of public space.
Portland’s pilot program is based on similar, successful ventures in New York and San Francisco. But in those cities, the space reclaimed from cars is made public; big signs note that anyone, not just patrons of a platform’s sponsoring restaurant, can use the tables and chairs. In Portland, businesses will shoulder the cost of building the café seating (Wafu’s cost about $1,000), pay for a $459 outdoor café permit, and pay the city market rate for any lost metered parking. In exchange, the restaurant can claim exclusive use of the space for its patrons only.
The program is similar to the conversion of the narrow stretch of SW Ankeny outside Voodoo Doughnut into carfree restaurant seating last summer. Businesses along the alley paid the city $8,472 in 2012 for the right to fill former public parking spots and roadway with private picnic tables that greatly expand their seating capacity.
While carving out person-friendly space from cars is great, says Matthew Passmore of Rebar, a San Francisco-based design firm that’s been a champion of “parklets” nationwide, “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 cafés will be used daily by more people than the parking spots were, making the land arguably of 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,” says Anderson. In other words, instead of storing private vehicles on public land, the city is allowing the storage of private tables. Business owners wanted the spaces to be zoned as “sidewalk cafés,” not as public rights of way, in part because it means they can serve alcohol.
Portland Architecture Editor Brian Libby says that while it’s good to be skeptical of giving over public space to private uses, parking spots are not the type of public land that people want to hang out in, anyway.
“Putting in a few restaurant tables sounds like fun,” he says, “more than opening Pandora’s box. Streets and freeways still dominate the built environment in the United States and it’s right to reclaim some of that space.”
Portland ‘planner’ logic: putting pedestrians within inches of vehicular traffic is ‘pedestrian friendly’
@D, to be fair, pedestrians are equally close to vehicular traffic in places all over the world, this is not unique to Portland. Also, the proximity of cafe seating to traffic is not something that the City needs to go all “nanny state” over. People can assess the risks for themselves pretty easily, and if they don’t think it’s safe, they will just take a seat inside. Trust me, there are some decisions that people can make for themselves without government getting involved.
It’s great to see the City reclaiming part of the public ROW from privately-owned cars. This space should be managed to maximize public benefit, and it’s hard to see how letting people store their private cars for free does ANYTHING for the public. Sure, it benefits the car owner, and perhaps the nearby business, but it’s an unfair subsidy — at the public expense — of the car owner and/or the private company.
Parking spaces in areas (like SE Division, Hawthorne, Belmont, Broadway, etc.) where there’s more demand than supply should be metered, and the resulting revenue should be spent on public services (e.g. maintenance of the public ROW; public schools; community centers).
Creating parklets that are privately-controlled is a lot like giving the same space to a private car driver. Let’s hope the City gets smart about this, adds meters nearby, and then charges the restaurants whatever they would otherwise earn in foregone meter revenue.
a solution of sorts but i won’t eat beside cars and traffic anywhere
It is pretty bizarre no one has a problem with a restaurant basically taking over a public space for a nominal fee, car owners have to move their car but restaurant owners can throw out anyone they want.
Maybe Portland is really just that more conservative than New York and Seattle?
@Ardennes, don’t be surprised. People are rarely idiologically consistent. Change just one detail, and there would be protest marches on City Hall. If it was a bike lane instead of a parking space, or if the restaurant was a McDonald’s, there would be all kinds of anger. Personally, I think this is a great idea, and I hope they do it in a lot of places. I think it makes the street more interesting. (also, I don’t care about parking spaces.)
Nice try but it only makes sense if people don’t mind adding a generous dose of car exhaust to their meals. On the other hand it is a great place for a smoking patio.
-Lianagan
Lots of great thinking on the comment board, essentially:
“the cafes are too close to cars to be pedestrian friendly, so we should just leave the cars PARKED CLOSER TO THE SIDEWALK and keep driving and parking easy”
Now close your eyes and envision a solid block of cafes, bike corrals, food carts and other forms of colonized street parking…
imagine who’s yielding to pedestrians in that situation? imagine the expansion of public space as you walk down the sidewalk and run into people in what was formerly a parked car? imagine how much less exhaust there is when people are biking and walking instead of driving?