Could Richmond turn streets into open dining spaces like here in Alexandria? Image by Joe Flood licensed under Creative Commons.

With demand for parking down 90% across America, business leaders and city officials alike have begun repurposing empty streets and vacant parking stalls into outdoor seating and public parklets. Except in Richmond. Over the three years of the city’s parklet permitting program, not a single application has even been submitted.

But with COVID-19 related closures in full swing and restaurants desperate for revenue, could now be the perfect moment for Richmond to refashion its car-centric public space into patios and parklets?

Everywhere to park, nowhere to go

With the number of American lives lost to the novel coronavirus fast approaching 120,000, the need for strict social distancing to prevent its further spread has become painfully clear. While the pandemic has taken a toll on nearly all aspects of normal life, the experience of dining out has been particularly pressed to adapt to these challenging times.

In Virginia’s current Phase 2 of managing the virus, restaurants may allow patrons to sit inside but in limited numbers and unprecedented circumstances. Interior dining rooms may not exceed half their capacity while parties must remain six feet or more away from each other. The food industry turns a notoriously tight profit margin as is, so with inside seating cut by half how is a restaurateur supposed to get ahead?

For thousands of business owners across the country, the answer to this conundrum has been to look outside. Eight decades of car-centric city planning has gifted (or cursed) nearly every establishment in America with an overabundance of parking right out front, whether on the street or in a dedicated lot. With nowhere to safely go during the pandemic, the vast majority of those spots have been left empty for months.

To help their food scenes survive these hard times, cities across the world have closed their streets to cars and opened them for people to sit, dine, and enjoy the fresh air. One might expect vibrant metropolises like Miami or New York City to be leading the way, but many of the most ambitious cities have included more modest candidates such as Cincinnati which released plans to convert 25 streets into outdoor seating. Even suburban Maryland has gotten in on the action with a streamlined “streatery” program.

“It’s exciting to see other cities spring to action to provide more outdoor space for dining and recreation during the pandemic, especially cities you wouldn’t expect like Cincinnati and Tampa,” said Max Hepp-Buchanon, Venture Richmond’s Director of Riverfront & Downtown Placemaking. “They’ve converted parking to spaces for people so that residents can continue to enjoy their city during a time of crisis by eating outside.”

As Richmond’s eclectic food scene has powered the city’s rise onto tourism to-do lists, one has to wonder why local government has yet to make space for one of our top assets. With some area restaurant owners worried they may have to close up shop permanently in two months’ time if they can’t seat more customers, could now be the perfect moment to copy other cities’ plans and open Richmond’s streets to its restaurants?

A survey question about open spaces from the Richmond 300.  Image by Richmond 300.

Cafés over cars

According to 1st District City Councilmember Andreas Addison, the demand from the food industry is there. “Business owners have been reaching out to me to help them add patios or sidewalk seating, but the challenge we have in Richmond is that parking requirements cause people to become possessive. If we take parking away, some worry that it’ll be hard for people to get to businesses even if new patios create more space for the actual business,” he said in an interview.

Despite the familiar tetchiness any attempt to rework parking for private vehicles into more public spaces habitually triggers, 9th District City Councilmember Dr. Mike Jones believes it would be worth it if the move helps save Richmond’s beloved restaurants.

“Business owners’ livelihoods are locked into the health of our communities,” he said. “As someone who drives a very big car, I would give up on street parking to help out our restaurants. Can we give up some of our on street parking to make sure they have the space they need to function? I would support a resolution to make that happen!”

Addison’s office has been working behind the scenes to try and streamline the City’s parklet permitting process through which such parking to patio conversions would happen; however, currently the city charter requires each application be reviewed by the City Planning Commission as well as the Urban Design Committee before any changes can take place.

“We wanted to introduce an ordinance to eliminate the reviews on parklets and waive the $350 permitting and $150 renewal fees, but we had to push pause on that unfortunately,” said Daniel Wagner, Addison’s Liaison.

With vocal support from Richmond’s Director of Economic Development who has asked interested businesses to submit their request for more patio seating through the City’s RVA Strong assistance platform, Addison hopes much of the process can be fast-tracked, including the Department of Public Works’ formal application.

With many restaurants terrified by the prospect of permanent closure within two months’ time, Councilmember Jones is calling for fast action: “If we’re truly pro-business, then we need to explore some of these things that may make us uncomfortable but will help keep our restaurant scene alive. This can’t be a 60-90 day affair. This needs to happen quickly — within the next 30-45 days. Speed and government aren’t usually synonymous, but this is something we’ve got to get done as soon as possible.”

If Petersburg can do it…

Nearly perfect proof that a quick remedy to the current dining crisis is possible lies just a half an hour south of Richmond in Petersburg — the much-panned crown jewel of Virginia’s Tri-Cities. Within a matter of weeks, the Cockade City’s administration, city council, and business community came together to open historic Old Town’s Sycamore Street as an outdoor dining promenade.

With charming string lights and more than 40 socially-distanced tables available to patrons, this stretch of town between Bank Street and Bollingbrook has come alive with an energy as close to pre-pandemic life as possible. Twenty tables are reserved for three restaurants along the corridor (Alibi, DJ’s Rajun Cajun and Longstreet’s) while the other half are open for diners to sit at as they see fit. By placing all tables 10 feet away from one another, the City hopes to provide a safe space for local businesses to flourish.

After facing a complete shutdown for two months, local business owner DJ Payne appreciates the reprieve. “This has drawn a lot of people down here and helped our business come back quicker and faster,” he said. “I’m now doing the same level of sales I did last summer.”

To keep up with his freshly booming business, Payne has had to hire three servers, a bartender, and two more kitchen staff — essentially a doubling of his workforce. Despite the summer sun, he says Old Town’s 40 tables stay full from 11 am to 11 pm.

“I haven’t spoken with one person yet who has said anything negative about this,” said Payne in an interview. “Everyone’s excited that Petersburg has brought back space in which we can hang out, grab a drink or a meal, and enjoy the fresh air. We should have done this a long time ago. We’re working with the mayor and city council to make this permanent. Nobody misses driving down that block of the street anyway.”

Can Richmond replicate the success?

Addison for one believes Richmond can catch up to its southerly sister city. “People are starting to realize there may be an opportunity here, and it’s my hope that we can take this chance to become a more walkable, bikeable city,” he said. “The biggest thing we need to do is to get the proof of concept on this idea out there so we can help people to better understand the advantages and hurdles of these changes.”

A mural in front of Brewer's Cafe in Richmond. Image by Hamilton Glass.

With his experience organizing Richmond’s 2019 Park(ing) Day in which 20 parking spaces were converted into temporary parklets by some of the city’s top architecture and engineering firms, Hepp-Buchanon hopes he can help. “Last September’s celebrations were a good demonstration of how businesses can expand the space for their customers to sit outside and eat,” he said. “We need to do everything we can to lower the barrier to entry on the implementation of parklets. I’d like to partner with local businesses to shepherd the first parklet through so we can work with local officials to figure out how we can make it as easy as possible to expand this program.”

If the City can work with business owners to restore parking for private vehicles back to public space, Jones bets the move could prove a boon to Richmond’s restaurant scene, regular residents’ quality of life, and even to the town’s artsy reputation. “I would love to see the creativity that would result from this,” he said. “We could have projects like the mural AJ Brewer put in front of his café all over the city. People are going to transform spaces with art and furniture, and I think the city could actually become more alive than it’s ever been.”

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Tagged: coronavirus, parking, parklets, public spaces, restaurants, richmond, virginia

Wyatt Gordon is the senior policy manager for land use and transportation at the Virginia Conservation Network, and an adjunct professor at Virginia Commonwealth University's Department of Urban Planning. He's a born-and-raised Richmonder with a master's in Urban Planning from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa and a bachelor's in International Political Economy from American University.