Restaurant and bar owners trying to adhere to new permitting rules for parklets are living a bureaucratic nightmare.
On a recent Friday night, my partner and I stopped at Ruby Wine, a natural wine bar in Potrero Hill, to meet some friends we hadn’t seen in a long time. The bar was dark and warm, filled with the tannin-scented exhalations of all the people crammed inside; compared to that, the parklet, a tiered wooden structure that clung elegantly to the sloped street, was literally a breath of fresh air. Patrons hung around the cozy, tiered parklet in clusters; inevitably, we ran into other friends who just happened to be there. Friend groups collided; people exchanged numbers. It was, in my mind, the kind of vibrant, but intimate life stuff that cities can do so well.
And yet, despite spending so many resources trying to revitalize the city and reform its image, like spending millions of dollars to disrupt its urban core for Asia-Pacific Economic summit, San Francisco’s government seems determined to dismantle one of the few things proven to bring life to our streets.
Parklets that were erected in 2020 under that year’s regulations, often to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars, have been subject to ever-evolving rules in the years since: at least three times, according to one owner I spoke to. Parklet operators face steep fines for noncompliance even if their parklets used to be permitted. Only a psychic would have been able to avoid this situation.
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In 2021, after the city gave parklet owners just two weeks to comply with expanded regulations, Supervisor Aaron Peskin told the Chronicle, “It’s the most uncoordinated, messed-up, insulting display of government incompetence.” To grant business owners a reprieve, the Board of Supervisors unanimously approved an ordinance delaying parklet fines until April 1, 2023, and mandating that permit reviews by city departments take no more than 30 days. Mayor London Breed then granted an extension for parklet fixes to coincide with that date.
But now the chickens are coming home to roost once again.
Case in point: Ruby Wine and Alimentari Aurora, the Italian deli next door, are crowdfunding for the $30,000 it’ll take to completely overhaul their joint parklet to meet the city’s new regulations. Despite making modifications and paying to apply for a minor encroachment permit that might allow for a bench on the sidewalk, Alimentari Aurora owner Dario Barbone says his applications have all been rejected. Even Supervisor Shamann Walton’s office, which agreed to assist Barbone with expediting the permit process, has had no luck in getting any response from city departments.
When the rules changed in 2021, the city announced that it would be providing $2,500 grants to help parklet owners with the costs of adapting their structures. Barbone applied three times to no avail.
“The city has given us nothing,” he said. On the other hand, the Public Works department did permit Barbone to put trash cans where the bench would be. “So the sidewalk is good for trash, but not people.”
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Another business owner, Nicolas Torres of the Mission District’s Buddy and True Laurel, told me that it’s been an incredible hassle trying to make up for the lack of synchronization among the multiple city departments involved in regulations, including planning, fire and public works, which each have their own timelines to deal with.
“They don’t seem to be all on the same page,” he said. “It’s discombobulating.”
He doesn’t mind most of the new regulations, which are put in place for safety reasons: Bumpers and reflectors are a great idea, especially after the few times Buddy’s parklet got hit by cars speeding down 22nd Street.
But other regulations have seemed oddly capricious and unrealistic. One corner of True Laurel’s parklet, which had sloped walls, was 5 inches taller than the new 42-inch height allowed by the city to preserve visibility. They got dinged for that, even though you can see through the sizable gaps in the walls and the parklet is nowhere near an intersection.
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In November, Torres opted to dismantle the whole thing and start from scratch. Despite the 30-day permit review period mandated by the Board of Supervisors, Torres says that the True Laurel parklet is in permit hell, with two months and counting of waiting for a city sign-off on a new design so that he can then submit another permit application to the Fire Department.
“It’s been two months of not having a parklet,” he said. “For us, that’s a major revenue loss.”
And it’s not just San Francisco. This week, Oakland’s Bay Grape, a wine bar near Lake Merritt, was forced to dismantle its popular parklet. The city’s new regulations were too cost-prohibitive, the owners wrote on Instagram. “After evaluating the many thousands of dollars it would cost us to redesign according to updated requirements, re-permit, license, build and maintain, we just can’t justify the cost and so, she’s no longer with us.” It was over $3,000 just for one of the application fees for a redesigned parklet, with no guarantee of approval.
Parklets have been a lifeline for people and businesses during the pandemic, providing well-ventilated spaces that enabled us to safely participate in public life. Some, like the parklet in Potrero Hill, are open for use even if you don’t buy anything.
They’ve also helped restaurants claw back into sustainability after some tough years: By sacrificing a few parking spots, parklets expanded restaurant footprints, allowing for more space. True Laurel started to become profitable once it got a parklet, Torres told me. “To run a certain style of hospitality that believes in treating your employees to a decent living, providing food that’s healthy and working with farmers you want to work with, you need to be a certain size in this city: You need foot traffic and seats.”
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Safety and accessibility absolutely matter. But in obfuscating the permit process in the congealed muck of bureaucracy and offering little help to parklet owners for bringing these structures up to code, cities like San Francisco and Oakland are set to destroy one of the few success stories of the pandemic years.
Reach Soleil Ho (they/them): soleil@sfchronicle.com; Twitter: @hooleil
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