BURLINGAME (KPIX) – The City of Burlingame is moving forward with a plan to introduce a fee structure for businesses wishing to continue operating parklets.

Beginning April 1, businesses wishing to keep parklets must pay the city a $1,500 annual rental fee and a $250 monthly cleaning fee. Overall, a Parklet would cost a company about $4,500.

“We set up the parklets as an emergency measure to give businesses some relief during the pandemic,” Mayor Ricardo Ortiz said. “It was an emergency measure. Now we are aiming for a more permanent agreement.”

However, some business owners tell KPIX that they need to stop using their parklets as it would cost too much.

“After this decision was made by the city council, we checked our budget and our numbers – we really couldn’t afford it,” said Kemal Polat of Il Piccolo Caffe. “That’s about $4,500 a year. It was a lot for us. Still we fight. Our business is not like it was before COVID. We had to make the decision to give up the Parklet.”

John Kevranian, the president of the Broadway Burlingame Business Improvement District, tells KPIX that he and the business owners have no problem with the $1,500 rental fee but disagree with the $250 cleaning fee. He estimates that four out of seven companies using parklets on Broadway will eventually dismantle them.

In a letter to the city council, Kevranian wrote:

“Some of you may perceive and feel that our restaurants are doing very well. Well the bottom line is they are not doing the business they were in before COVID. Staff shortages, increased product costs and supply chain issues have impacted profits. Also, I would like to remind you all that the majority of commercial landlords have not discounted rent for the past 22 months during the pandemic.

“This year, increases in the minimum wage, hikes in sewage fees, additional costs for composting, new regulations for food-to-go containers in March 2022 and other cost increases in the food industry will take some of the profits away from our restaurants. Not to mention COVID issues and less indoor dining.

“The $250 cleaning fee has to come from somewhere, e.g. B. by reducing the working hours of workers or increasing prices for customers. The cost of chicken has tripled and the cost of beef and other products has skyrocketed. How much can you raise with a customer?”

The mayor says the city wants to make sure businesses are actually using the parklets, which are taking up valuable parking spaces. He also claims that maintaining parklets requires the use of city services and the city cannot continue to pay for those services.

“We’ve had complaints from many local merchants that the restaurants are taking up parking spaces that their customers would normally use,” Ortiz said. “The cleaning fee simply covers the city’s cost of cleaning these parklets. Same idea if you use city services we should be compensated. We should not offer people free city services so that they can benefit financially.”

Polat says he is in a difficult position. He felt it was too expensive to pay for a parklet with the new rates, but he fears demolition could also hurt his business.

“Losing this parklet – it’s going to affect my business more in the future because people come in and they see they don’t have parklet, they don’t see outdoor seating and they’re probably going to go somewhere else,” he said.

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The parklets that popped up across San Francisco at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic to allow for al fresco dining and shopping are here to stay.

Overseers voted Tuesday for a revised version of the Shared Spaces Regulation, which will allow companies to work permanently outside in spaces built on sidewalks and parking lots.

Legislation, endorsed by supervisors Ahsha Safaí, Rafael Mandelman, Catherine Stefani, and Matt Haney, governs the program and regulates everything from approval fees to application and approval processes.

According to the ordinance, fees will only be introduced after two years. After this period, retail chains will have to pay a fee of up to $ 3,000 per year for a single parking space, while small businesses can apply for a fee waiver, according to KTVU.

I am excited to see our shared space legislation being passed unanimously by the board, which means the parklets and outdoor dining we love so much will now be permanent in San Francisco! pic.twitter.com/jNgeKLZW2V

– London Breed (@LondonBreed) July 14, 2021

“Shared spaces have brought life and tension back to our neighborhoods in an incredibly challenging time. It was wonderful to see friends and families enjoy their community and support their local businesses, ”Mayor London Breed said in a statement. “By taking the steps necessary to make Shared Spaces permanent, we are providing another lifeline for local businesses to thrive and creating a clear path to rebuilding our economy as San Francisco recovers from COVID-19.”

Managers spoke at length about concerns about vandalism and illegal activity that can occur in parklets overnight, and in response, Safaí introduced an amendment to the regulation that allows companies to close parklets from midnight to 7 a.m., KTVU said. The regulatory authorities approved the change.

“We are pleased that the Shared Spaces Legislation has been passed by the Board today, with some important changes submitted by Supervisor Safaí that will make this program work for restaurants, their employees and our community,” said Laurie Thomas, Executive Director by the Golden Gate Restaurant Association and owner of Rose’s Cafe. “We thank Mayor Breed for her unwavering leadership in this groundbreaking policy, the members of the board of directors who supported this, the city officials and their staff for the hard work to bring this together, and the residents and lawyers who worked on it, theirs To share perspectives. “

Sharky Laguana, president of the San Francisco Small Business Commission, called the decision to keep parklets the biggest land use change in San Francisco since the 1906 earthquake. “I’m extremely happy,” Laguana wrote on Twitter. “We have a permanent Shared Spaces program. Outdoor dining is here to stay.”

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SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (KRON) – Many San Francisco restaurants and bars report feeling blind after receiving warnings and notices of code violations due to their outdoor parklets.

The city made the parklets permanent earlier this year, but also issued new rules that could force some restaurants to tear down their parklets entirely.

Some restaurants say the notices have been coming in for weeks from various departments warning owners that they will be fined heavily for not complying with their parklet.

However, a city guide says that this is actually not allowed, at least until June. He says this is a disorganization by the local government and the city needs to do better.

After spending thousands of dollars building outdoor parklets, some San Francisco restaurants and bars say they are now considering demolishing them. Many of them were made aware of these changes when they received warnings of Code violations.

“Many of these violations were incredibly frightening and clumsy. They listed the fines you would have to pay on the first and second days for not following the rules and requested that things be done by December 31st, like finding a contractor in the month of December as if they were there not, ”said Ben Bleiman.

Ben Bleiman owns several bars in the city and is president of the San Francisco Bar Owner Alliance.

He says he received a notification and personally knows nearly 30 other bar owners who have received these alerts.

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Bleiman says there has been a major misunderstanding among many owners and a major misunderstanding between city departments.

“The fact is, many of the buildings that have been built do not meet basic city regulations. The second thing that happened is that they started interpreting the permanent legislation and several different departments made interpretations that we did not expect. One thing we didn’t see coming was we had to get them 3 feet from the parking lot hashtags, ”Bleiman said.

Laurie Thomas of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association adds that this is just the beginning of these new rules that have emerged from a new 66-page document.

“Three meters from the ends? The first time I saw this was on September 9th. I have emails that go to people, like what? No, obviously you are built in a red zone or in an intersection. Nowhere did we know you had to move your parklets 20 feet from an intersection, ”said Thomas.

San Francisco made the parklets permanent earlier this year, and according to board-enforcement laws, business owners must comply with the Code by June 30th before they can be fined despite these warnings.

“All the permits, the restaurants, bars, and everything you have, breathed a sigh of relief, only to find that a number of city departments that have not coordinated, have not even obeyed the law that the board of directors Adopted unanimously, issued rectifications and violations with the threat of fines, and fines are not approved or allowed until mid-2022, “said supervisor Aaron Peskin.

Supervisor Aaron Peskin recently enacted law to move that deadline to March 2023, saying the city needs to treat these small businesses better after what they’ve been through for nearly two years.

Supervisor Peskin says the legislation will go to the full board early next month.

He is confident that this will happen, one reason the San Francisco Bar Owner Alliance is telling its members not to make any decisions until the city comes together and gives a clear picture of how the rules are moving forward.

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When the pandemic broke out, crowds of people who settled inside rushed outside to have puppies.

It was then that Lynnet Spiegel knew she had to figure out how to get her pet store outside.

Fortunately, San Francisco officials created Shared Spaces, a program that allowed parking lots, sidewalks, and other public spaces to be used for commercial activities – commonly known as parklets.

Spiegel was thrilled. She hired a contractor and spent $ 20,000 on a parklet in front of Jeffrey’s Natural Pet Foods on Powell Street between Joe DiMaggio Park and Washington Square. There she hosted puppy socials, training courses, and other events for new dog owners in the neighborhood.

But it has become more difficult for the pet store.

Almost 18 months since she built her parklet, Spiegel recently received several quotes threatening fines if she doesn’t make structural changes, including lowering the side walls, moving plant pots off the sidewalk, and trimming the roof.

The parklet – and maybe their business – could be in jeopardy.

“I’m fighting Amazon and Chewy and I’m trying to keep a brick and mortar store open,” said Spiegel. “The only way for me to stay alive is to have other customer incentives than just buying groceries.”

Spiegel is not alone. As the Parklet program becomes a permanent fixture on the streets of San Francisco, tensions are simmering between city authorities, who are forced to impose a semblance of order on what is largely an ad hoc system, and traders, who are still emerging from the pandemic recover.

“As we are moving into a permanent program, the quickly built structures have to adapt to long-term use,” said Robin Abad, who heads the Parklet initiative. “We have turned a crisis response into a permanent opportunity to rethink the use of our roads for the benefit of the people who live, work and visit here.”

The Examiner spoke to business owners in North Beach and Chinatown, two neighborhoods where parklets were essential to the survival of commercial corridors, about the uncertain future of these outdoor spaces.

When parklets first hit the streets last summer, they were a boon to traders. Many said this was the only way to survive the lull in protection on the ground. According to the Shared Spaces website, at least 1,800 requests were approved, of which over 1,000 were for the parking lane.

It was also totally free-for-all.

Parklets ran all along the line in terms of design and durability. Random floors and ramshackle roofs were one end of the spectrum. On the other side were sprawling buildings adorned with lights, speakers, and decorations.

Initially there were bare guidelines, but enforcement was lackluster. Some community members have raised concerns about American Disability Act compliance, traffic disruption, and first-aid access.

A law on the permanent use of sidewalks, parking lots and other parts of public space was introduced by Mayor London Breed in March and subsequently passed by the Board of Directors. Its aim is to enable companies to benefit from outdoor dining beyond the pandemic, and to codify stricter rules and regulations for parklets.

According to Abad, the passage of this law has kicked off the city’s ability to enforce compliance in some security-related areas now rather than waiting for the permanent version of the program to go fully into effect next year.

Notices of violations and fines are currently only issued to parklets in urgent need of repair to restore emergency access, particularly potential obstacles for fire departments to reach the building and comply with ADA rules, he said.

All other violations are expected to be lifted by July 2022.

When Chelsea Hung received an injury notice giving her 14 days to make structural changes to her parklet or risk fines of up to $ 500 a day, she was devastated believing she was meeting all fire safety and accessibility concerns .

Hung spent over $ 5,000 building the parklet in front of Washington Bakery and Restaurant, the business near Portsmouth Square that her family has owned and run for 25 years. She has modified the parklet several times since it was first built to accommodate changing city guidelines.

Given this recent injury – one Hung doesn’t quite understand because she says it’s written in a technocratic slang referring to city codes – she wonders if it would be easier to tear down the parklet instead.

Parklet outside the Washington Bakery in Chinatown. (Kevin N. Hume / The Examiner)

“We don’t know if the rules will keep changing,” she said. “We are faced with this dilemma of whether to continue investing in outdoor restaurants.”

Spiegel could face a similar dilemma. Her quotes require her to slightly reduce the size of her parklet, a move she says would force her to reduce the size of her puppy training classes.

“That wouldn’t be feasible,” she said. “It’s intolerable.”

Dealers agreed that fixing fire and accessibility issues is key to keeping the streets and residents of San Francisco safe, but they expressed dismay at how many of their violations fall into those buckets, especially after a year and a half with no problems.

“I think the confusion was that it was given piecemeal and it was given afterwards,” said Hanna Suleiman, who owns Caffe Greco on Columbus Avenue. “Nobody came to say, ‘You could do this and you couldn’t.’ They gave people the opportunity to do what they wanted and now they are coming back after over a year. “

Hanna Suleiman, owner of Caffe Greco, sits in the parklet in front of his restaurant in North Beach. (Kevin N. Hume / The Examiner)

Suleiman’s Parklet dates from before the pandemic. It was built in 2010 as one of the first publicly accessible parklets in the city, taking strict design and construction quality criteria into account. During the pandemic, he expanded it to include four motorcycle zone spaces and added a roof.

Now, he says, he is being asked to “follow guidelines that I was not aware of” within 10 days or face fines. He spent about $ 9,000 on the parklet during the COVID-19 crisis, and he believes he would have to spend up to an additional $ 5,000 to adapt it to the new code.

“I think there should be guidelines, no question about it, but there should be reasonable guidelines,” Suleiman said. “The idea was that this was built to help small businesses and now it is going to destroy small businesses.”

Several vendors told the Examiner that they could not decipher something as basic as the messages themselves and that they had received little help from the city. They said various quotes were from multiple agencies with no clear point of contact, and when they turned to numerous email addresses, they would hear nothing or waver between people for weeks.

Some of those who want to do this but need more time due to ongoing delivery bottlenecks, rising construction costs and staff shortages have not heard of possible extensions.

“It’s a total communications breakdown where businesses are being told contradicting things week after week and The City is failing to coordinate a unified, helpful approach to compliance,” said supervisor Aaron Peskin, whose district includes the North Beach and Boroughs Includes Chinatown.

Officials acknowledge the transition was confusing.

Abad told The Examiner that starting this month, departments will be putting their notices to dealers in a single package with a cover sheet to help business owners “understand what to fix and create a plan for it.”

cgraf@sfexaminer.com

ChinatownnewsNorth BeachSmall Businesses

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Outdoor parklets for restaurants and businesses will remain a part of the San Francisco cityscape after the pandemic.

The board of directors approved an amended version of the regulation regulating the Shared Spaces program on Tuesday, which will allow small businesses in particular to continue to use public sidewalks and parking spaces to strengthen their businesses – and to close these spaces at night.

Regulators disagreed on whether companies should close parklets overnight. Proponents of closing the parklets said that opening the parklets places a responsibility on business owners to clean the rooms of overnight clutter or to deal with the noise from people using the rooms after business hours. Proponents of keeping the parklets open overnight said they wanted to preserve the public space for public use.

Supervisor Ahsha Safaí introduced two last-minute changes on Tuesday to allow companies to close parklets overnight and keep the program running within the planning department, which issued parklet permits during the pandemic, rather than operating on public ones Relocate work. Both changes were passed, with night closing times set from midnight to 7 a.m.

“This program is one of the lasting legacies and a positive direction for our city,” Safaí said. “The biggest complaints were when people used these rooms after hours. It is more difficult to defend these spaces when they are only open 24 hours a day. “

Supervisors Safaí, Matt Haney, Rafael Mandelman, Gordon Mar, Myrna Melgar and Catherine Stefani voted for companies to be allowed to close the parklets overnight.

Haney, who represents the downtown neighborhoods hardest hit by outdoor homelessness and drug use, said business owners in his district told him that opening parklets overnight would be “significant challenges”. He feared that companies would be held responsible for problems like selling drugs in a parklet.

“If you asked for these to stay open overnight, they would be unusable for a lot of the small businesses I represent,” Haney said.

Superiors Aaron Peskin, Connie Chan, Dean Preston, Hillary Ronen and Shamann Walton voted for parklets to be open to everyone overnight to save space that is hidden from the public.

“We’re starting this incredible program that has changed the landscape of San Francisco,” said Ronen. “We’re giving up an extraordinary amount of public space to accommodate private companies, as I believe we should, but in return I believe the public should have the greatest possible access to it.”

Legislation requires companies to add a public bank nearby or in the parklet.

In recent months, the Parklet program has been put to the test as elected officials grappled with regulating the hundreds of outdoor areas that became a lifeline for small businesses during the pandemic. In particular, the board members wanted to ensure that parklets are accessible for disabled people and discussed the permanent privatization of public spaces.

At some point, Mayor London Breed threatened to put the Parklet program on the ballot if the board did not pass it.

Mom-and-pop businesses enjoy a two-year program fee waiver to aid in economic recovery. Fees range from $ 1,000 to $ 3,000 for a single parking space, depending on the type of parklet, and are charged for formula chains.

Some business owners were pleased to hear that the program they saw as a lifeline would continue.

“I’m gushing right now,” said Ben Bleiman, founder of the SF Bar Owner Alliance, which represents 475 bar owners in the city. “This is the biggest positive change for small businesses in my 20 years in San Francisco.”

Bleiman put up parklets in his two bars – Soda Popinski’s in Nob Hill and Teeth in the Mission – as soon as he could. The outdoor area at Nob Hill is “life or death,” he said, because without it he would not have been able to reopen the bar.

Bleiman was grateful for the latest change that allowed companies to close their parklets at night, arguing that not even city parks stay open all night.

“I thought this was a recipe for disaster,” he said. “The downsides were very obvious. We just have a street clean and homeless and crime and security epidemic in the city around our trade corridors. Having to keep these open at night would have set off a beacon for this activity that would have put small businesses in direct conflict with our neighbors. “

Bleiman did not understand the argument that parklets privatize public space, especially when they take up parking spaces. He stressed that there would still be enough space on the sidewalk for people, including disabled or elderly people, to pass by.

Shirley To, owner of the Bottoms Up Bar and Lounge on Mission Street near the Excelsior, had mixed feelings about the plan to make parklets permanent. Last year, the parklet she built in August enabled her to keep her business open.

But she had problems, including homeless people using the parklet “like a home” and leaving them to clean the room, she said. And in May a drunk driver rammed the parklet late at night, tore a hole in the wall, and hit a nearby homeless man. With repairs, she ended up paying more than $ 8,000 for the parklet.

The parklet was still open, but didn’t use it very much, she said, because her guests prefer to be indoors near the TV and protected from the wind and cold. She said she would give him another chance when the weather warms up.

“I’m still a little worried,” she said.

JK Dineen and Mallory Moench are contributors to the San Francisco Chronicle. Emails: jdineen@sfchronicle.com mallory.moench@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sfjkdineen @mallorymoench

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