Outdoor dining grew during the pandemic, now there's a plan to keep the expansion - The Dallas Morning News

We are as eager as anyone to be done with this year, to flip to the last page of the sci-fi horror thriller that is 2020 and chuck it out the window.

But we can credit this terrible year with deepening our gratitude for the things that helped us endure it. The time spent with our closest loved ones. The courage of essential workers. The spaces that our cities carved for us outdoors.

Earlier this year, we saw parklets spring up on curbside parking spots as Dallas restaurants and shops tried to navigate restrictions to contain the pandemic. These pop-up patios have given customers a place to escape isolation while extending a lifeline to businesses losing customers and revenue because of rules limiting dining room capacity.

Those city parklet permits were set to expire at the end of the year. The good news is that Dallas is moving toward making parklets a perennial fixture by rolling out Street Seats, a program that will extend the parklet experiment to 2022 and give the spaces a more permanent form.

The Dallas City Council recently gave the green light to Street Seats, which will start taking applications in February, and postponed the expiration of the temporary parklet program to April. This decision will give businesses time to make the transition to the new program.

The city has 17 active parklet permits. Several are concentrated in the Bishop Arts District and Lower Greenville, but as Rosa Fleming, director of the city’s Office of Special Events (which manages the permits) told us, parklets can be found across the city.

Under the pilot program, which began in May, restaurants can fence off up to three adjacent parking spots and set up café tables and chairs. Business owners are required to create a buffer between the parklet and the abutting traffic lane with items such as planters, and the makeshift patio has to be packed up and stored inside every night after closing.

Street Seats limits the parklet to two parking spaces and requires business owners to install a platform resembling a traditional deck that sits at grade with the sidewalk. The decks will have more robust buffers and provide a safer environment, said Jason Roberts, whose urban planning nonprofit, Better Block, is working with the city to develop five designs that business owners can choose from.

“As a business owner, I can say [the parklet] has kept us afloat,” said Roberts, who co-owns the Revelers Hall bar on Bishop Avenue. “Without it, we definitely couldn’t have kept our staff employed.”

There are tradeoffs involved in making parklets more permanent. Building the platforms will cost several thousand dollars, and business owners will also have to pay higher permit fees. Permit processing may take a couple of months instead of a few days because of the construction required.

Fleming said the Office of Special Events is already getting a lot of calls expressing interest, so her staff plans to conduct virtual outreach sessions with business owners. We encourage the city to make this a smooth process and to welcome suggestions from cash-strapped restaurateurs.

Parklets made car-loving Dallasites willing to give up their parking spots. That’s one 2020 twist we should celebrate.

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Outdoor dining grew during the pandemic, now there's a plan to keep the expansion - The Dallas Morning News
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