Will the new rules make DC Streatery less controversial?

A playground covered with a green tarpaulin across the street, Rosemary Bistro Cafe doesn’t attract much attention — it’s an ugly but practical structure that has popped up all over town since the pandemic. The older Chevy Chase DC crowd enjoys the Covid-safe food there, while drivers heading downtown on Connecticut Avenue only notice the structure when they suddenly have to make a left turn to go around it. But in the minds of a few outspoken neighbors, the continued presence of this unremarkable platform is unacceptable.

One morning in August, Frédéric Darricarrere, a French-born restaurateur who owns a cafe, discovered that his restaurant was the subject of the petition urging the city to remove it as soon as possible. The building, which has been in existence since 2020, is legal and has a permit. However, the petition called for it to be scrapped because it claimed the street was harming other businesses on the block, some of whose owners were behind the petition. Carolyn Papetti, co-owner of Italian Bar, a cafe next door, explained in an email, “Simply put, this street blocks the visibility and therefore the viability of an Italian bar.” The petition has more than 500 signatures; Meanwhile, Darricarrere has started his own petition for support.

The question of how to deal with D.C. restaurants has become more pressing as the pandemic subsides, with restaurant owners and some patrons taking advantage of the extra outdoor seating, while skeptics point to problems such as increased road and sidewalk congestion and perceived unsightliness. Now, the city is finally stepping in to deal with situations like the Chevy Chase diner fight. A new set of instructions published in September District Department of Transport— after years of consideration — prohibits streets from accommodating lanes that would otherwise be used by traffic (rather than exclusively for parking). The Rosemary Bistro Cafe structure, which occupies an entire strip of Connecticut Avenue, clearly violates these new restrictions; it will need to be dismantled by next July. “My plan,” says Darricarrere, “is to follow the rules.”

Many streeters will still be allowed in D.C. under new guidelines that DDOT inspectors will begin enforcing next summer. In reality, these regulations are intended to make the program permanent throughout the city. But restaurants will have to adhere to an updated set of restrictions governing where restaurants can go and what they look like. The owners will also have to pay an annual “public space rent” of $20 per square foot of the structures.

The new requirements forbid enclosed streets that look more like rustic cabins, with high walls that replicate indoor rather than create more of a patio dining experience. These structures typically hide stop signs, crosswalks, and bike lanes from drivers and pedestrians. The new guidelines also address the issue of accessibility: where many restaurants now have a ramp from the sidewalk to the street-level dining area, they will now have to place tables level with the sidewalk on the platform. In addition, DDOT is putting an end to retained streets in loading zones and in front of bus stops.

The city will hold a hearing where restaurant owners and the public can provide feedback on the proposed restaurant guidelines, which are still subject to change. Any restaurant with an existing restaurant permit that expires in December will receive an extension until July 2025.

So what will all this look like in practice? For a preview, all you have to do is head over to Adams Morgan’s 18th Street. The main area of ​​the district was until recently filled with dilapidated restaurant buildings of various heights, colors and materials, a chaotic assemblage popular with diners but not very carefully thought out.

In September, city workers tore down all those temporary streets, leaving the commercial strip strangely bare, and began replacing them with purpose-built prototypes that comply with the new regulations. Bright structures of Norwegian design are made of metal and beautiful wooden flooring, which gives the street a clean and uniform look. Paid for by DDOT, the Adams Morgan restaurants are a gift to the 33 bars and restaurants on 18th Street and a showcase of what similar establishments could look like in the city once the new rules are fully implemented.

Although the new structures are undoubtedly more attractive, they do not end the debate. Some residents, including restaurant owners, believe the city should move away from what was originally intended as a temporary emergency response. Bill Duggan, owner of Adams Morgan’s Madam’s Organ bar, says they are unassuming, taking up essential parking spaces for customers and vehicles, hiding rats and hiding sidewalks from passing police cars.

Madam’s Organ is one of the establishments on 18th Street that has received a paid city theater; Duggan says he chose that option over the motorcycle and scooter parking that DDOT had proposed as an alternative. But in general, he considers streateries more of a negative than a positive. “The biggest thing is that if you go there at night, you’ll find that most of them are empty,” he says. “I just don’t think it’s a great look for the city.”

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There are rarely American ones commercial streets changed just as quickly as it did in the summer of 2020, when cities across the country began allowing special outdoor dining for desperate restaurants. Kim Vacca, who was hired on DDOT’s neighborhood planning staff in February of that year, quickly changed jobs. Approving permits for these outbuildings—a small part of her predecessor’s job—soon became a larger part of her job.

That June, three months after Mayor Muriel Bowser issued the initial stay-at-home order, Vacca’s team allowed D.C.’s first parking lots to occupy parking spaces on 18th Street. At first they were improvised and simple: tables and chairs raised outside and surrounded by concrete Jersey barriers. The weather was fine, and diners who felt comfortable dining out were grateful for any opportunity to visit the restaurant, regardless of the neighborhood.

But the restrictions on indoor restaurants were in effect in winter and then in 2021. Restaurants began to become more complex and substantial, all with relatively minimal guidance from DDOT. The agency, for example, never created formal rules for insulating structures in the winter, but restaurants did so anyway, enclosing what was completely open space in various ways and even sometimes receiving grants from the mayor’s office for heaters and insulation.

As the pandemic faded and restaurants returned to some form of normality, many restaurateurs and customers realized they didn’t want restaurants to disappear. “What was a necessity became an advantage for many people,” says Daisuke Utagawa, who still maintains his establishment out of Daikaya and Tonari, the two nearby restaurants he owns in the Pennsylvania Quarter. “All attractive cities in the world have outdoor seating. It adds something to the value of the city that is hard to quantify.” It also adds value to you maybe calculate—in the form of additional income. Darricarrere says his restaurant accounts for half of his business during the warm season, and other owners also say the extra tables have boosted revenue.

The stewards were initially granted a 90-day permit, but DDOT decided to extend the temporary program and then did so again after the first year. Since then, it has continued to be updated with some changes to the rules as the situation changed. The latest temporary permit expires at the end of this year; the new rules must be permanent.

Many restaurants eventually abandoned their outdoor structures, in part because of the effort required to operate and maintain them. Today, huge swathes of the county — east of the Anacostia River, most of the city and Petworth, most of northeastern D.C. and the upper Northwest — have almost none. That’s why, for example, Rosemary Bistro Cafe Street stands out: there’s nothing else like it nearby, so drivers don’t expect to encounter this thing when it suddenly appears in their lane.

In Georgetown, about half of the pandemic-era streets have now been demolished. Still, street restaurants have proven resilient and popular, and even before DDOT released its new guidelines, the Business Improvement District was working on ways to make the structures more attractive and durable.

Streets built in a mix of styles that didn’t fit the historic look of Georgetown weren’t always popular with the neighborhood. But they have achieved something significant: The number of crashes and serious injuries in the area has been cut in half, according to a report commissioned by the Georgetown BID. The theory is that removing the lane slowed traffic in general and made it easier for pedestrians to cross busy M Street and Wisconsin Avenue.

The BID now fully supports the idea of ​​making Georgetown’s streets permanent. “At first we thought they were a response to the pandemic, not realizing how much of a benefit it would actually be to the neighborhood,” says Faith Broderick, the BID’s director of economic development. “Because we didn’t have straighters for so long, we were able to control their impact. We’ve seen a much higher rate of leasing in restaurants; we see a lot of foot traffic.”

However, there can be drawbacks for restaurant owners, especially the cost and effort required to keep up with the changes in regulations. James Wozniuk opened Makan in Columbia Heights on March 8, 2020, weeks before the mayor’s stay-at-home order. After several months, Wozniuk paid a contractor about $10,000 to build a wooden walkway. Beginning in 2020, about every six months, Wozniuk prepared to remove the structure as the interim program expired, only to delay when DDOT renewed it.

The upcoming stricter guidelines, Wozniuk says, will likely mean the end of his outdoor installation, which will no longer be up to code. He could tear it down and replace it, but it doesn’t seem worth the effort: “Spend a lot of money to build it, spend a lot of money to tear it down, spend a lot of money to restore it, and then have to pay rent on it “I’d rather just clean up the street and be done with it.”

How many additional restaurateurs will make the same calculation? Barring Adams Morgan’s trials, owners will have to pay out of pocket to get their facilities up and running, and many restaurants are already struggling. DDOT has $750,000 earmarked to subsidize the transition. Part of this will go to a consultant who is willing to develop street designs for restaurants. The rest will likely go to grants for owners to purchase materials. The department has not yet decided on the exact amounts.

But this funding will not be enough to cover all the necessary work. Many restaurants do not comply with even the basic temporary guidelines in place now, let alone the new permanent requirements. “Almost all managers will have to change something,” Vacca says, “whether it’s changing the position by an inch or completely tearing it down and starting over.”

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This article appeared in the November 2024 issue of Washingtonian.