A small restaurant built one of Philly’s most charming streeteries. Then came the street pavers.

It was the spring of 2020, and restaurants such as Pumpkin were hanging by a thread. A tiny New American BYOB known for serving beautifully plated three-course meals in an intimate, 26-seat dining room, Pumpkin had no takeout business. It didn’t even have the right containers for it.

But the situation was do-or-die, so Pumpkin started offering takeout and moved outside. In July 2020, it opened a gem-like eatery in the middle of South Street, where diners could eat chilled corn soup and swordfish under string lights. As the pandemic wore on and indoor dining returned, Pumpkin found itself with nearly double the seats it once had — a lifeline during what was effectively a restaurant apocalypse.

Then, in November 2022, Philadelphia launched an official Outdoor Dining Program. Surveying a landscape cluttered with temporary COVID-era outdoor eateries that had sprung up with few rules, officials introduced a raft of new regulations and required restaurants to apply for licenses, which cost $1,750 a year.

Pumpkin co-owners Hillary Bor and Ian Moroney pivoted once again. They hired an engineer and an architect to help design a structure that would meet the new regulations. It would be able to seat only eight people, but they still figured it was worth it. “It’s good for the neighborhood, it’s good for business,” said Bor, who opened Pumpkin almost 20 years ago. “It just looks nice.”

In March of this year, after 16 months of navigating city bureaucracy, Bor hired contractors to finally build the structure. Overlaid with reclaimed barn wood, the new streetery has a charming, rustic look. Inside, Bor and Moroney hung LED lights from the corrugated plastic roof and set up four tables. They started serving diners in it right away.

“YOU ARE HEREBY ORDERED TO REMOVE THE STRUCTURE FOR NECESSARY STREET PAVING,” the official order read.

It was May 1, about four weeks after construction was completed, and the city had delivered a note. It was time to pave South Street, and Pumpkin’s streetery needed to be dismantled. If the restaurant’s owners did not do so by June 30, the city would do it — at their expense.

Bor was frantic. She called the Streets Department to see whether they might work out some compromise, then the city’s Law Department and her City Council representative, Kenyatta Johnson. No one could help.

The whole process — building the first streetery during the pandemic when the restaurant’s interior was closed; tearing it down; building the second one to meet city regulations — had cost roughly $50,000. It was an enormous amount, but a figure that Bor thought she could recoup with the permanent streetery.

“We just spent the money and two years of our life doing it right,” she said. “We considered just selling the restaurant, literally. It was so devastating.”

Unlike the creative adaptations to outdoor dining that have flourished in places such as New York City and Pittsburgh, Philadelphia has regulated its own streetery scene to within an inch of its life. The commerce department told The Inquirer there were roughly 250 streeteries scattered across the city at the height of the pandemic. (The city has previously said that number was as high as 750). Since November 2022, 120 restaurants have applied for licenses and only 40 have been approved, according to city officials — and just 22 have actually been issued.

The streeteries that have survived are ruled by what can appear to be contradictory requirements. They must be able to protect diners from the cars and buses that inevitably whiz past, so crash barriers are mandated. But restaurants must also remove structures with 48 hours’ notice for things such as snowplowing, underground utility work, parades, and marathons. Restaurants “should avoid build-outs that would require special lifting equipment, such as cranes, or time-intensive disassembly efforts for removal,” the city advises.

Though such requirements are a hassle, the restaurant industry largely viewed them as a fair compromise.

“The city still has to function. In order for these restaurants to be able to have outdoor seating, whether it be sidewalk seating or streetery seating, we have to understand we are using the city’s right-of-way,” said Ben Fileccia of the Pennsylvania Restaurant & Lodging Association, which has fought for the city’s streeteries.

Pumpkin’s streetery design incorporated the crash barriers mandated by the city inside the walls of the structure itself in order to increase seating space. The streetery’s three walls are built from cinder blocks, rebar, and poured concrete, making it difficult to dismantle.

Bor said that if the city had warned her about its repaving plans ahead of time, she would have simply waited to build the new streetery until paving was complete. Now that it’s up, she cannot afford to remove it, especially during the summer, when business is typically slower and outdoor dining might attract more customers.

A spokeswoman for the Streets Department and the city’s Department of Licenses and Inspections told The Inquirer that the approval process for paving South Street typically takes five years, indicating that the Streets Department approved Pumpkin’s streetery knowing that a massive paving project would require it to be taken down within weeks.

When asked if the Streets Department looks at whether a large paving project is coming soon to an area where it is granting streetery licenses, a spokeswoman reiterated that all streeteries must be able to be removed within 48 hours.

A spokesman for Council President Johnson said the office “is going to ask the Streets Department to reach out directly to businesses like Pumpkin BYOB that will be impacted by the repaving of South Street to see if a compromise can be reached, but ultimately, the final decision on this issue will be up to the Streets Department.”

Bor, who has an upcoming hearing appealing the paving decision, cannot face the prospect of rebuilding the structure from scratch for the third time. “I’m going to spend another $20,000 to move it, rebuild it, store it? For 8 seats? Have I really lost my mind?” she said recently.

As the clock ticks down, she and Moroney are trying to figure out what to do. The whole experience has left them disillusioned, unsure whether running a restaurant in Philadelphia is sustainable.

“I don’t feel like the city is really on our side,” Moroney said. “They don’t really care.”