SLO restaurants turn to parklets, parking lots for outdoor dining
The city of San Luis Obispo is rolling out new parklets to allow customers to enjoy al fresco meals, open-air haircuts and more.
The new arrangement — which follows Gov. Gavin Newsom’s July 13 order requiring the coronvirus-related closures of indoor dining, beauty salons, bars and other business sectors — features outdoor seating at several new spaces along prominent sections of the city’s downtown area.
Parklets are defined as seating areas or green spaces, created for public use on or alongside a sidewalk, often where streetside parking space used to be.
The city also is allowing expanded uses of parking lots to help businesses seat people outdoors.
Farmhouse Corner Market, The Madonna Inn and Taste are among the local businesses that recently set up seating in their parking areas.
“Our recently expanded outdoor patio will continue to grow and provide ample seating while allowing you to maintain social distance,” Farmhouse Corner Market announced on its Facebook page on July 14. ”Being part of the restaurant industry means being on your toes, and ready to shift direction in a moment’s notice.”
While suspending its weekend street closures as part of its Open SLO program, the city is encouraging the use of sidewalk space for outdoor dining and shopping.
The city put its street closure program, which opened in mid-June, on hold on July 15 after some downtown business owners complained that temporarily shutting down portions of Higuera and Monterey streets to car traffic hurt their customer traffic.
SLO installs more than two dozen parklets
San Luis Obispo’s parklet program includes quick installations of about 25 temporary parklets using water-filled barricades and other materials to allow businesses to expand into parking lanes.
Parklets can currently be found on multiple streets downtown, including Higuera and Monterey streets.
The first city parklet to be installed is outside Big Sky Cafe on Broad Street and cost about $10,000 to construct, said Luke Schwartz, San Luis Obispo transportation manager. It features a seating area with umbrellas and tables for dining across from the new Hotel Cerro.
“This is about the lowest cost design approach we felt comfortable with and could be flexible enough to deploy at other locations,” Schwartz said, adding that the pilot parklet tested the design and materials to make sure “we like the concept before replicating it.”
The city allocated $200,00 towards its Open SLO program in March, and added another $100,000 to the program at Tuesday’s meeting as part of $566,000 in federal stimulus C.A.R.E.S. Act funding the city was awarded.
The San Luis Obispo City Council also allocated $200,000 in small business grants, $30,000 to homeless programs and about $236,000 to reimbursements to the city for non-budgeted city COVID-19 costs.
Most of the barricades for the parklets are temporary to make sure businesses can continue to operate safely, according to city officials.
“We are in the process of either switching them out with semi-permanent parklets like the one in front of Big Sky Cafe, working with businesses to construct their own or painting/covering them in the interim,” Greg Hermann, the city’s deputy city manager, wrote in an email.
The city is also installing permanent parklets. Those may be fully or partially funded by neighboring businesses and the city, which owns them regardless of who pays for the structure.
“Nearly every restaurant I’ve talked with downtown would like to upgrade to a more permanent parklet, similar to the one at Big Sky, if funding allows,” Luke Schwartz said. “A few are even choosing to design and fund their own installations quicker — for example, Kreuzberg Coffee and Buffalo Pub.”
Schwartz said a private business could probably build a parklet in about three to four weeks — “from conception to installation depending on contractor and material availability and lead times.”
Costs to build parkets range from about $10,000 to $30,000.
Barbershops, hair salons to operate outdoors
Under the state’s reopening guidelines, salons and barber shops may operate outdoors, and San Luis Obispo has at least three such businesses that have parklets or are in process of planning them, said Lee Johnson, the city’s interim economic development manager.
They include Twig & Arrow Salon, The Ritual and Bladerunner Salon & Day Spa.
Other restaurants planning to use their parking areas for dinging include Café Roma, which needs a permit because its Railroad Square parking lot is city-owned, Schwartz said. Privately owned parking lots don’t need city permits.
Leonard Cohen, owner of Ciopinot and La Esquina Taqueria, told The Tribune he plans to use outdoor dining space in his San Luis Obispo parking lot. He’s in the process of switching the locations of those two restaurants, which are located in The Creamery Marketplace.
For more information about the Open SLO program, go to www.openslo.org.
This story was originally published July 23, 2020 at 7:00 AM.
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