From Peninsula To South Bay, Outdoor Dining Is Here To Stay

SAN CARLOS, CA — Prior to the pandemic, the city of San Carlos only had one restaurant with a parklet — a sidewalk extension structure that allows businesses to expand their area. For Greg St. Claire, the owner of Town on Laurel Street, it had taken years of prodding until what he described as a “progressive” city council agreed to implement a pilot program in 2018.

St. Claire invested in an outdoor seating area, and it quickly became one of the most popular spots downtown. So when COVID-19 hit last year and a majority of indoor activities were indefinitely shut down, St. Claire was prepared to take advantage of an already-existing parklet, and he quickly helped convince the city to enact a temporary parklet program and close down parts of Laurel Street.

“The reactions of so many communities in San Carlos is that they love it,” St. Claire said. “They love seeing their friends. Particularly after so little interaction, it’s really been nice. The sentiment that we’re hearing is, ‘Keep these parklets, keep some of these streets closed in different areas.’”

As California prepares to reopen its economy on June 15, the concept of parklet programs, expanding outdoor dining options and potential street closures in cities’ downtown streets will likely remain long after mask mandates are lifted and people are comfortably congregating indoors again.

Around the Bay Area, city councils are meeting to extend parklet programs and come up with guidelines to make them permanent. They’ve received mostly positive feedback from residents and business owners, even with some concerns over taking away parking spaces.

Over the past few months, Patch reached out to economic development officials across the Peninsula and South Bay for this story, and the responses were clear: The parklet programs were one of the few silver linings of the pandemic, and cities are keeping them around.

‘A runaway success’

The concepts of parklets and promoting outdoor dining are not new. Prior to the pandemic, the ideas existed in outdoor seating areas, sidewalk permits and the feeling of the atmosphere in the downtown area of a city. When COVID-19 hit, people stuck indoors for most of the day wanted that feeling even more, according to Simon Vuong, Redwood City’s Economic Development Manager.

“The experience you get from being social, in a setting where you can enjoy a meal and also take in the sights and the sounds of the city that you live or work in — that type of engagement and activity in our downtown, that experiential piece of it, you still can’t replicate via online,” Vuong said.

Redwood City extended its parklet program through the end of the year and closed some downtown streets through Sept. 30. The decision has given visitors more space to roam and safely resume some semblance of interaction.

“The additional space has afforded people more of a comfort level in coming out,” Vuong said. “That extra space gives people more breathing room, and it gives them the ability to stay longer, and right now we know that the outdoor space has been our savior during a pandemic.”

A downtown area “creates the glue that binds us together as a city,” according to Alex Greenwood, the director of economic and community development for South San Francisco.

“These areas give the entire surrounding area their image, their identity,” Greenwood said. “You always want to have these important commercial streets be interesting and lively and have lots of pedestrian activity.”

Instead of the pandemic turning downtown areas into complete ghost towns, the parklet programs encouraged people to congregate outdoors.

“It’s been a runaway success,” Greenwood said of South San Francisco’s parklet program. “We didn’t see this as controversial at all. I can’t think of a single negative comment that we got.”

In some cases, cities’ emergency programs were so popular that they ended up being safety hazards. Burlingame, which closed down Burlingame Avenue to allow for outdoor dining last summer, quickly reversed the decision after city councilmembers thought too many people were gathering and not adhering to social distancing guidelines.

“I don’t really think the city had an idea of how successful it would be,” said Joseph Sanfilippo, the economic development and housing specialist for Burlingame. “It was great because it was giving a lot of revenue to our businesses that were hurting, but it wasn’t conscionable to continue.”

Preference for outdoors

Even after all restrictions are lifted, the general public in the Bay Area appears reluctant to immediately rip off their masks and start clamoring for indoor reservations at restaurants.

In Redwood City, a survey conducted last December by the city of more than 100 community members found that only 36 percent would dine indoors when a vaccine became available. A March survey of 1,000 registered voters in the Bay Area for the Bay Area Council found that two thirds of respondents believed eating indoors was dangerous but three quarters said eating outdoors was safe.

In the South Bay community of Campbell, where the city council recently supported extending the parklet program to Sept. 30, a survey of 20 restaurants and five retailers that have parklets found that most of the businesses’ clientele prefer to be outdoors.

The parklets have allowed restaurant owners to increase revenue with more seating capacity, and provide comfort to customers who want to be outside, the city staff report found. Additional seating has helped restaurants pay back rent, deferred sales taxes and vendor costs in addition to overhead costs, which is key given that a full recovery from the economic impact of the pandemic could take between one to two years, restaurant owners told city staff.

“I don’t know even when there’s the green light for restaurants to go back to 100 percent capacity, will that really happen?” pondered Todd Capurso, Campbell’s Public Works Director, during a council meeting on Tuesday. “Is that what their customer base is going to feel comfortable doing?”

Capurso estimated that has resulted in around “750 feet worth of parklet out there.” Just as customers may not yet be comfortable eating indoors, restaurants want to keep an investment in parklets that have served as a lifeline during the pandemic.

“I suspect that even though there may be relaxed requirements in regard to indoor dining, not all customers may have that comfort level that they’re going to want to go from outdoor to indoor at the flip of a switch, so to speak,” Capurso said.

Parking problems

But permanent implementations of programs like parklets or street closures could take some time for cities to iron out. Moving forward, businesses that wish to maintain a parklet may be subjected to stricter design guidelines.

“A lot of these outdoor dining areas were put up in a hurry and they were approved in a hurry,” Greenwood said. “They don’t always have the fit and finish and consistently good design that we would like to see if it’s a more permanent structure.”

Perhaps the biggest adjustment in a post-pandemic world with street closures or parklets taking up streets would be the parking spaces taken away from high-density downtown areas. During the pandemic, cities haven’t seen major issues with fewer parking spaces available.

St. Claire, the owner of Town in San Carlos, said that concerns over parking downtown are overblown. In 23 years living in San Carlos, St. Claire said he hasn’t had to park more than a block away from where he had to go downtown.

“If you go to any dynamic downtown, any dynamic city, you don’t get to park in front of the business," said St. Claire, who also has restaurants in Redwood City and Palo Alto. “If you’re just simply coming to a downtown wanting to pull right in front of it, that just in my view is a very selfish way to look at things.”

Prior to the pandemic, the discussion over parking as a prized possession was far more robust. But, said Vuong of Redwood City, “I think we realized in this situation that we’re in, having a car parked there all the time wasn’t the best use of that space when our restaurants are hurting so much.”

Some Bay Area cities that are more car-centric or receive a lot of tourists may still want to prioritize parking. In Milpitas, a South Bay city surrounded by three highways, parking will be a concern come June 15 and beyond, according to Economic Development Director Alex Andrade.

Andrade said that during the city’s outdoor dining program that drew around 60 participants, restaurants that didn’t have parking available right outside their door had to send their servers further out. And some restaurants located in shopping districts that share a roof with other tenants may have to compete for parking spaces.

For Pacifica, located along the coast of the Pacific Ocean between San Francisco and Half Moon Bay, parking remains vital to ensure access to the coastside. The city took quick action to implement a parklet program when the pandemic first struck because parking would not be impacted, according to Tina Wehrmeister, the planning director and assistant city manager.

Pacifica is looking into a permanent program, which Wehrmeister said will take more work and analysis.

“Using a few parking spaces or one parking space in front of your business for a parklet wasn’t going to have a significant impact,” Wehrmeister said. “But once we get back to normal, we have to study that a little more than make sure that we have a program that makes sense for our community.”

Some solutions offered by local economic development officials include changing straight, drive-in spaces into angled spaces to allow for more slots and turning restaurants’ outdoor recycling spaces — which are often on surface parking lots — into parking spaces and charging rental fees for parklet spaces to make up for the lost public parking areas. Los Altos, Palo Alto and San Mateo are among the cities that have signaled support for the latter idea, according to a staff report by the city of Campbell.

Different types of restaurants may have varied opinions on parking. A dine-in, banquet-style restaurant may want a large outdoor dining area while a quick service place that relies on takeout may desire as many convenient parking spaces on the same block as possible.

“We have a bustling downtown. The question is: ‘How much do conventional single driver vehicles play a role in that?” said Greenwood of South San Francisco. “We have some businesses that rely on the ability of people to access them conveniently and have on-street parking. So, what’s good for one type of restaurant is very bad for another type of restaurant next door.”

But the issue of parking won’t put much of a dent in the overwhelming support for a continuance of city-sponsored programs that help businesses outdoors. Last month, the city of San Mateo approved plans for permanent year-round street closures downtown, with 80 percent of the public supporting the idea.

For a region with good weather for a majority of the year, the Bay Area, like many other parts of the country, is finally embracing the idea of outdoor dining.

“It allows for this culture in California to take advantage of the outdoors,” Andrade said. “In our Bay Area, we love our outdoors in terms of going hiking and going out in nature. This is allowing us to get back to nature, to have conversations, meaningful connections at these outdoor opportunities, and it makes a place fun.”

During the pandemic, many restaurants pivoted to business models that were temporary, like relying on takeout. But according to Vuong, the parklets will not be temporary.

“This is an investment more so than tables, chairs and tents are,” Vuong said. “I think it’s also something to look forward to. It’s an amenity space that can add value to their restaurant.”