A reprieve for a small Philly restaurant’s streetery — but it’s only a stay of execution, says the city

Pumpkin’s streetery will be able to stay put until after Labor Day, a temporary win for the tiny New American BYOB after the city previously ordered it to dismantle its streetery by June 30. Two weeks after The Inquirer detailed the restaurant’s plight, the city informed Pumpkin and other restaurants with streeteries that previously planned paving on South Street would be delayed.

The city cited “unforeseen utility coordination requirements beyond City control” in an email to Pumpkin’s owners as the reason for the postponement.

Hillary Bor, Pumpkin’s co-owner, remains frustrated. “It’s not a victory when I have to come back from vacation and wonder if it’s still there,” Bor said. “It doesn’t make any sense to me. I’ll just wake up one day and it’ll be gone.”

Pumpkin’s vexing experience with its outdoor eatery illustrates the challenges facing Philly’s outdoor dining scene more broadly.

The 26-seat restaurant first opened its streetery during the pandemic, when indoor dining was shut down. Hung with string lights and seasonal gourds, the outdoor space was a lifeline. After the city introduced new requirements for its streeteries, Pumpkin’s owners pivoted once more, tearing down the old structure and rebuilding it to the city’s specifications.

All told, the process took roughly $50,000 and 16 months of bureaucratic wrangling, Bor said.

About four weeks after construction was completed this spring, the city told Bor that she would need to dismantle it for street paving. If the restaurant’s owners did not do so by the end of June, the city would do it at their expense. The approval process for the paving typically takes five years, the city told The Inquirer.

The order left Bor and co-owner Ian Moroney grasping for answers.

“Restaurants are struggling as a rule,” Moroney said. “So when something like this happens... could we close? It’s conceivable.”

In places like New York City and Pittsburgh, outdoor dining has flourished, while Philadelphia has regulated its streeteries to near-extinction. The commerce department said there were roughly 250 streeteries scattered across the city at the height of the pandemic. 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 Commerce Department said it had recently introduced “full-time Business Navigators to help businesses resolve issues in navigating city regulations, including outdoor dining licenses.”)

Both the Streets Department and Licenses & Inspection approved Pumpkin’s streetery design, which incorporated the crash barriers mandated by the city inside the walls of the structure itself, in order to increase seating capacity. (The streetery’s three walls are built from cinder blocks, rebar, and poured concrete.)

City officials now admit that they made a mistake.

“This should not have been built. This should not have been approved. We should have caught it. Yes, we failed to do that in the way that the process is set up to do,” said Michael Carroll, deputy managing director of the Office of Infrastructure and Transportation Systems. “We still have a problem, in that the street needs to be paved.”

Elsewhere on South Street, other restaurants are also navigating the city’s streetery labyrinth. Bob & Barbara’s Lounge, a beloved dive bar two blocks from Pumpkin, has a streetery license and has appealed the order to remove it, according to Ronald Patterson, a lawyer representing the restaurant. The restaurant is awaiting a hearing date. Bor said she filed an emergency appeal and has not yet heard back.

The Streets Department noted in its email to Pumpkin that the order to remove the streetery was still in effect — just delayed.

“In the meantime, it is strongly recommended that you take advantage of this opportunity to comply with the order,” the Streets Department said, “so that you can keep your property intact and maintained in your custody.”