Restaurants beg City Hall to fix the outdoor dining system after just 13 establishments get approved for ‘streetery’ licenses

City Council on Friday heard calls to reform the city’s year-old system for approving restaurant “streeteries” — the once-popular curbside dining structures that have been nearly regulated out of existence since their pandemic heyday.

More than 800 restaurants citywide once operated streeteries. But under the new regulatory system, the city has granted only licenses to 13 restaurants from a pool of 118 applicants since November 2022, according to city officials.

Testifying before the Committee on Streets and Services, restaurant owners and industry advocates argued that the new system has burdened restaurant owners, widened inequities within the hospitality industry, and quashed a vibrant cultural amenity within Philly’s food scene.

“It’s pressing that Philadelphia comprehensively evaluates the current program, identifying what works well and what requires improvement,” Ben Fileccia, of the Pennsylvania Restaurant & Lodging Association, told Council members.

With spring and summer around the corner, Fileccia stressed the urgency for reforms. Recommendations from commenters Friday included streamlining the permitting processes, providing more flexibility in streetery designs, and lowering the regulatory hurdles that have forced many restaurants to give up.

Councilmember Rue Landau, an at-large Democrat who called for the streetery hearings, said she had concerns over the licensing process and saw an opportunity to fix the relatively new process.

“It’s clear from what we heard today that the current process to approve outdoor dining is not working for everyone, and we need a solution to make it more accessible and equitable for restaurants that want to participate, especially Black and brown and immigrant-owned businesses,” Landau said.

» READ MORE: Hundreds of restaurants got excluded by Philly’s new ‘streetery’ zones — some by less than a block

Early in the pandemic, City Hall threw a lifeline to restaurants by allowing them to extend their dining rooms onto sidewalks and into parking spaces where people could safely eat outdoors as the coronavirus raged.

Rolling back the red tape led to an al fresco dining renaissance, with some restaurants spending tens of thousands on light fixtures, canopied roofs, and even HVAC units.

But complaints began to mount. Some structures posed clear hazards for pedestrians and passing vehicles, while others complained about the loss of parking spaces. City Hall brought back the red tape.

In late 2021, Council implemented a “streetery zone” law that many proprietors called unfair and punitive. Officials eventually negotiated a slew of new regulations and forced all restaurants to apply for licenses. Either bring the streeteries up to code, the message went, or take them down.

Restaurateurs balked at the new fees and requirements: a $1,750 license fee, a $1 million insurance policy, and a slew of structural ordinances that guaranteed that many restaurants could never be built to code.

Many small shops don’t have the money or resources to endure an application process that has been mired in inefficiencies over the last year, several operators testified on Friday.

Those with the means have had to hire engineers and architects to help with their application. Jason Evans, a bar and restaurant consultant, said getting a single permit involves dozens of email exchanges, hounding multiple departments for documents, and waiting hours for often unnecessary appointments.

“Many businesses do not have the resources to not only make appointments to sit at the [Municipal Services] Building for hours to see someone, let alone the tons of emails to find out the appropriate information or the correct department,” Evans said Friday.

“Business owners have been focused on pandemic recovery, and following the rules, while frustration grows as the process has become more of a hardship than it may be worth,” Evans said.

» READ MORE: Philly restaurants reluctantly dismantle their streeteries ahead of City Hall's crackdown.

In written testimony submitted to Council, Ashley Thomas of the Royal Restaurant group, which has eateries in half a dozen neighborhoods, described the new building guidelines as draconian. Under the new code, lighting and heating elements are prohibited. Restaurants also must get approval from the city’s Art Commission in addition to the Department of Licenses and Inspections.

“I’m not building a building,” Thomas wrote. “It’s an open-air, 6-foot, three-sided streetery with crash barriers. The fact that we can’t have lights or heat is bananas. There have been propane heaters and strings of Christmas lights on the sidewalks of Philadelphia for decades.”

Only 50 restaurants had applied for licenses when enforcement began in January 2023, as some proprietors preemptively gave up and tore down their streeteries ahead of the crackdown. Since that time, the Streets Department has received 118 applications and approved 39. But only a third of those have received licenses from L&I.

One of the first to apply was Nate Ross, owner of New Wave Cafe. Outdoor dining saved his 40-year-old Queen Village landmark during the pandemic.

Ross told Council he did everything by the book — hired an architect, submitted the paperwork, met the specs. More than a year later, he’s stuck in limbo with his application and still doesn’t have a streetery license.

If a seasoned small-business owner like himself can’t succeed, he asked, what does that say about the system?

“All you need to know about how flawed and difficult the process has been is that someone like me with all of my veteran experience still has not been able to get to the finish line,” he said.

Mike Carroll, deputy managing director for Transportation and Infrastructure, said businesses can more easily apply for permission to set up tables and chairs in the parking lane that are blocked off by barriers. Unlike building a full streetery structure, that practice doesn’t require a city license or permission from the Art Commission.

”Put some tables out, put some chairs there, accommodate people in wheelchairs, and then when you’re done, get it out of the street,” he said. “That is infinitely simpler than trying to figure out how to fit a square peg into all these round holes.”