Moving Forward | What the second phase of Healthy Businesses permit program will look like
Building a sense of community? Making it harder for cars to blaze through the neighborhood? Creating an almost-European vibe? As the Healthy Businesses permit enters its second phase on its way to becoming permanent, many of the people involved continue to sing its praises.
However, with pandemic restrictions gone and the city introducing new rules for outdoor dining areas — many of which popped up since the start of the pandemic — the tide may be turning. Are business owners going to scrap their makeshift structures, or will the city landscape be changed forever?
Changes coming to Healthy Businesses Back in June, the Portland Bureau of Transportation, or PBOT, announced it was changing the Healthy Businesses program in its effort to make the program permanent.
These changes, which start Sept. 1, include a $150 permit application fee, a flat $500 fee for the use of a parking space, and a $6 per linear foot fee for sidewalk use. Along with federal funding from the American Rescue Plan, the city will use these fees to cover administrative costs of the program, including working with restaurants to ensure outdoor dining areas meet design guidelines.
PBOT spokesperson Hannah Schafer said fees are necessary to make the program permanent. Schafer also points out a single parking space provides a lot of square footage for $650, especially when compared to what they spend on indoor seating.
MOVING FORWARD: Permits for outdoor dining should continue
“Our goal moving forward is to find that sweet spot and the price point where we are charging appropriately for the use of public right of way space,” Schafer said. “But, we are also not creating a burden for businesses who are still looking to operate and thrive.”
While the fee structure is straightforward, design guidelines are fluid at the moment. Schafer said the agency “will be doing outreach over the course of the year for feedback from both businesses and the general public,” but the June statement mentioned removing free-standing built and tent structures; protecting sightlines next to crosswalks for pedestrian safety and to allow emergency vehicles to pass; and improving ADA access to address one of the more common complaints.
On its face, implementing new rules to make a slapdash program permanent as the threat of pandemic-era business restrictions recedes sounds similar to what happened in other cities last year. Unfortunately, in places like San Francisco and San Diego, new stricter regulations created hassles for business owners, putting the future of using the public right of way for outdoor dining in jeopardy.
Schafer said this is what PBOT is trying to avoid, and it looks like Portland’s leadership agrees. City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty directed PBOT to make the program permanent back in March, and City Council included funding for the program in its 2022-2023 budget.
This support explains why the new cost to set up shop in a parking space is significantly cheaper than it would have been pre-pandemic, and why Schafer described the June press release as the beginning of “Phase 2” of what will likely be a three-phase process.
According to Schafer, PBOT is aware some restaurants may need to make changes but adds PBOT will be “working with folks on a one-by-one basis … If we can make it work, our goal is to make it work.”
How business owners are feeling about their dining areas at year two Eli Johnson was one of the first restaurateurs taking advantage of the Healthy Businesses permit in summer 2020. Since then, Johnson set up outdoor dining areas in front of two of his establishments, including Atlas Pizza along the heavily car trafficked Southeast Foster Road.
While his outdoor dining areas didn’t prevent business losses, and not every business with a Healthy Businesses permit made it through the pandemic, Johnson believes his businesses would not have survived without it.
“People were really thankful to have a place to go that was safe and outside,” Johnson said. “That ranged from casual customers just being happy to get a cold beer and not drink it at home, to people feeling like they have a chance to reconnect with their community.”
Johnson is all for making the program permanent. Apart from one noise complaint and the occasional homeless Portlander (with whom Johnson said he has good relationships) using outlets he set up, the experience has been smooth and profitable, and his customers using the dining plaza in front of Dots Café on Southeast Clinton Street appreciate not having to worry so much about cars speeding by (he would like cyclists to slow down, though).
Johnson isn’t the only business owner who feels the program saved their neck. Chris Mateja opened his cocktail bar, Nightingale, on Northeast 28th Avenue right at the start of the pandemic. This meant for the first three months of Nightingale’s existence, its outdoor dining area in the parking space out front was the only seating they had.
To help Mateja’s bar stay alive, the city reimbursed Nightingale $2,000 to cover the costs of the materials and labor needed to construct his dining area.
“That was huge when we first opened,” Mateja said.
While at least one neighbor grumbled about lost parking since he opened, Mateja said his customers appreciate the change, with some saying it creates a “European feel” along one of Portland’s hippest dining streets.
Joking about someone who would complain about having to park three blocks away instead of at a business' doorstep, Mateja is excited to see the city do something supporting its reputation as a “transit, bike and pedestrian” oriented place — “especially in a neighborhood like mine, where it is very residential and we do see a lot more people walking around the neighborhood,” Mateja said.
Travis Preece, owner of three businesses located on Southeast Ankeny Street, has an even better view of how the neighborhood changed since the introduction of Healthy Businesses permits and its sibling, the Portland Public Street Plaza program.
When Preece got the opportunity to reopen Gorges Beer Co. with a full-street plaza, he got out the paint buckets, paid for some “Road Closed” signs, and set up around two dozen picnic tables on either side of Ankeny Street, with a rainbow-colored bike and pedestrian passageway painted right through the middle.
It wasn’t long before BikePortland labeled this splash of color along one of the busiest bike corridors, “Portland’s Best Distanced-Dining street plaza.”
Preece said the plaza kept both of his businesses alive, but that wasn’t the only benefit. While the tables were set up to help his Gorges Beer Co. and Ankeny Tap and Table, Preece noticed the plaza gets used by people not necessarily there to enjoy an IPA. In the mornings, it might be workers enjoying their morning coffee, while in the afternoon, there might be neighborhood kids playing in the new, safer public space. Rather than being frustrated, Preece is thrilled to see the space become a “community seating area.”
While Preece has also heard grumblings about lost parking, he said most of his customers are from within the neighborhood, and “they really want to have this community where they can walk around without having to worry about getting run over.”
Preece said most of the business owners he has spoken to feel the same way.
“We really saw during COVID that Portland could be like a lot of European cities where people can go, ‘hey maybe I don’t need a car anymore,’” Preece said.
Chantel Chinco, co-owner of Redwood on Southeast Stark Street in Montavilla, similarly pushed back on the idea that losing street parking would be bad for business. Chinco feels the dining areas, “draw people's attention as they are driving or walking by to go ‘oh look, there’s people in front of that restaurant.’”
If anything, Chinco is more aware of the problem cars pose for her business, as “it gets a little scary when cars are driving really fast by (Redwood).”
Business support for the Healthy Businesses permit and the Portland Public Street Plaza program doesn’t stop at the individual level. Chinco serves on the Montavilla East Tabor Business Association, or METBA, which worked closely with PBOT, neighborhood businesses and volunteers to sponsor the Montavilla Public Plaza at Southeast Stark Street and 79th Avenue.
Why would a business association help set up an entire plaza anyone can use, regardless of whether they actually set foot into a local business?
“We are in alignment with a goal that the city has to find different uses for roadways that are more community centered,” Neil Mattson, METBA president, said.
How business owners are reacting to potential fees and guidelines None of the four bar and/or restaurant owners I spoke to for this column believed the fees or the design requirements proposed for Phase 2 would force them to get rid of their outdoor dining areas. The general feeling was these changes were inevitable, if not ideal; they were worth it if it meant making the Healthy Businesses permit and public plazas permanent, and it was easier to plan for the future now the city has shown them a path forward.
The fees do feel excessive to Johnson, however. He is quick to point out there are a lot of people who still don’t feel safe dining indoors and believes some businesses will close if they can’t afford to hold on to a Healthy Businesses permit. When Johnson was asked about Schafer’s point on how the permit provides space for several tables at a lower cost than what businesses pay for indoor space, he agrees, but is still concerned business owners will have to pay a lot more to upgrade their space if strict design guidelines are introduced.
When it comes to the design guidelines, Mateja gets the push for something sturdier than tents, which were mostly put up when the city was in “survival mode,” and he is confident the city won’t require businesses to start from scratch. Chinco notes, “what we make back in business more than pays for (the proposed fees),” and is not expecting to have to make major changes to her dining area.
For Preece, one of the challenges during the height of the pandemic was it wasn’t clear how long he would be allowed to keep his plaza. While he has some concerns about future design requirements and the cost of the “Road Closed” signs, Preece feels like he can start investing more into the promenade on Ankeny Street now that it looks like the program will go on.
What Portland's leaders and community members should learn from this experience As Portland fights to overcome some of its toughest challenges, the success of the Healthy Businesses permit should serve as a model of how to change minds and make life better in Rose City.
While Portland is known across the country for progressive ideas about public space and reduced reliance on cars, the past decade has seen plenty of cities leapfrog us with bold projects actually shifting the status quo in favor of more just, sustainable, safer and fun uses of our streets that are also good for business.
While Portland loves a good plan, we struggle to execute. Part of this is a lack of leadership and a government structure that moves at snail-like speed, but the role local resistance plays is easy to underestimate. Mattson believes the Healthy Businesses program would not have been possible before 2020 due to resistance from businesses: “Anything that we do pre-pandemic, the first concern you hear about is parking.”
But there are always Portlanders looking for a chance to make a positive change to their city, and the initially free Healthy Businesses permit and Public Street Plaza program allowed many of them to experiment.
“I always believed that street seating would be good for business,'' Preece said of the plaza used by neighbors regardless of where they are spending their money. “But until COVID forced me to take that chance, I wasn’t able to justify the cost. Now it's clearly a good decision for the business and the neighborhood.”
These permits were also a direct challenge to an American status quo that says public space is for cars first, then people. But the dining areas were a simple concept proven elsewhere — malleable, relatively cheap and easy to take down if they didn’t work.
As Schafer puts it, the success of the Healthy Businesses permit, in particular, “really opened peoples’ eyes” and made it possible for people to “move beyond the idea that that parking space in front of a business is holy ground, and see it as more of an opportunity for placemaking, or bringing people in and making their businesses more community based.”
The Healthy Businesses and the public plaza programs didn’t just spark the imaginations of restaurateurs. Martin Martinez, a co-owner of Orox Leather Company in Old Town, not only supports restaurants taking over parking spaces in his neighborhood and the new public plaza down the block from his retail shop: he would also like to see more opportunities for retailers to do the same thing.
“We need more opportunities for retailers and restaurants to do commerce in a creative way,” Martinez said.
It is wonderful to imagine what might happen if we applied the same approach of “fast, light, easy, cheap” to more projects improving livability. How many new trees could be planted, playgrounds installed, parking lots removed, and tiny homes and shelters built if the NIMBYs (Not In My Backyard) were just ignored for a moment and city leaders gave Portlanders the chance to rethink and reinvest in public space — even if that space was no bigger than a parking space.
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