Vancouver city council’s green light to restaurant owners who want to build a patio on public parking spaces outside their establishments is the latest in a series of moves in the past several years to encourage al fresco dining.
The initiative’s success, however, is clouded by the failure of another pilot project related to patios.
Council approved a recommendation June 1 to allow restaurant owners to build up to 10 patios on boulevards and public parking spaces in each of the next three years.
City staff, who call these patios “streateries,” have not identified locations for these novel patios and are open to any business owner applying for a permit, said Scott Edwards, manager of street activities for the city.
Fees have yet to be set.
Edwards said city staff is speaking with counterparts at the B.C. Liquor Control and Licensing Branch (LCLB) to try to get approval for alcohol to be served on the streateries.
“Certainly we want [alcohol service] to be an option,” Coun. Heather Deal told Business in Vancouver. “I’m expecting it.”
Restaurant owners have to pay for the design and construction of the streateries and will likely have to pay the city for revenue lost from the removal of parking spaces.
The initiative is similar to a failed pilot project that started in 2013, when the LCLB allowed the city to approve licensed patios on city boulevards that were separated by an unlicensed sidewalk from a restaurant.
Rainier Provisions owner Sean Heather was the only restaurant owner to build such a patio. He operated it in 2013 and part of 2014 before shutting it down in frustration.
“What killed it was that the city and the liquor board stipulated that as long as someone was drinking on the patio, there had to be a staff member on the patio,” Heather told Business in Vancouver.
“If I had one person sitting there at 3 p.m. having a glass of wine, I had to have an employee on the patio who could not leave the area – just standing there to make sure that the customer didn’t pass off a glass of wine to someone passing by or that they didn’t look the other way when someone grabbed the glass off the table.”
His small restaurant, which he is selling, could not sustain the added labour costs, he said.
(Photo from 2013: Sean Heather stands in the patio that he built across a sidewalk from his Rainier Provisions restaurant in Gastown)
Streateries are likely to also be separated from restaurant buildings by unlicensed sidewalks, so similar rules are likely if the LCLB approves alcohol service.
Other city moves to encourage outside dining have been extending hours for restaurant patios that operate on city streets (as opposed to private property) to midnight from 11 p.m. in 2014 and to 1 a.m. from midnight in 2015.
Only restaurateurs who have not had complaints about their patios were approved for the extended hours.
Since 2011, the city has also approved building “parklets.”
Six parklets, which are unlicensed patios on city parking spaces and are open to the general public, have been built thus far.
The difference between parklets and streateries is that streateries are exclusively for one business’ customers, while use of parklets is not restricted.
That public access to parklets means that the city covers liability. Business owners are expected to cover liability on the streateries.
The number of small, unlicensed and unenclosed patios on Vancouver streets has been stalled at about 260 since 2008, according to city statistics. The number of large patios rose to 320 in 2014 from 267 in 2008.
Those numbers do not include patios entirely on private property. •
