Restaurant, city strike deal for patio peace
Compliance to accessibility rules will see trees moved, a few seats sacrificed
The family behind popular Preston Street eatery La Roma has come to a compromise with the city that will allow their sidewalk patio to survive, relatively intact, for future summers, while adjusting to comply with new accessibility-oriented by law rules.
For those the bylaw was designed to accommodate, the change can’t come soon enough.
Days earlier, the Papalias were grappling with a conundrum. They could adjust their patio to provide a two-metre-wide pedestrian clearway, as required by the Right of Way Patio Bylaw, and lose the vast majority of their outdoor seating. Or they could move the trees the city had planted on the sidewalk, and be in compliance with the bylaw; but that would require official co-operation, which Antonella Papalia said had not been forthcoming over the past several months.
City staff and transportation committee chair Coun. Keith Egli met with the La Roma owners Tuesday morning, and offered to remove the two street trees — maples, which the city said weren’t doing well streetside anyway — and replace them with a new tree species, far enough from the restaurant that the pedestrian space will meet the bylaw width requirement.
“They came up with a solution, which they should have come up with, like, three months ago, or four months ago, or five months ago,” Papalia said after Tuesday’s lunch rush.
They’ll have to sacrifice a few seats on the patio where adjacent street lights restrict the clearway and can’t be moved. But it’s better than having to shrink the patio from 40 seats to eight, as they ’d originally feared.
“The intent to this was never to negatively impact businesses,” Egli said Tuesday of the bylaw, originally passed in spring 2017. Rather, the goal “was to make the streets more accessible for people and also, in some cases, to open up some of these businesses to clientele that weren’t able to get to them before because of impediments or obstructions along the way.”
In addition to leaving the twometre clearway, any patio encroaching on city sidewalks must have barrier-free access, in accordance with city accessibility standards. The new rules go live April 1, 2019.
Local wheelchair users confirmed they’re confronted by obstacles nearly every time they head down the sidewalk in a popular area, and explained just how discouraging that can be.
“That stretch, it wasn’t terrible,” said Reid Mulligan, a wheelchair user and engineer, after navigating area of Preston Street outside La Roma. A sandwich board blocking part of the sidewalk posed a challenge, and if someone with a wheelchair, scooter or stroller was coming the other way, forget about passing simultaneously.
“I think two metres would probably be OK — just.”
As for the accessibility of Ottawa patios themselves, things could be worse, but they could also be better, he said.
“I just want people to have equal access. Why shouldn’t someone in a wheelchair have the same access as someone who is able-bodied and can walk, to get into a restaurant, enjoy all the restaurants in Ottawa?”
Beyond inclusivity, there’s an economic incentive to making an establishment accessible, says Bob Brown. The retiree, wheelchair user and co-chair of the transportation committee on the Council of Canadians with Disabilities pointed out that he can only patronize accessible businesses, and that his friends will join him.
As for the argument of some restaurateurs that they don’t have an accessible bathroom so an accessible patio seems unreasonable, Brown said he and other wheelchair users are accustomed to navigating such a situation.
“They know how long it’s going to take them to eat and how much they’re going to drink,” he said. “That’s one of the things about being a person with a disability, you have to plan your outing.”
According to Court Curry, city manager of right of way, heritage and urban design services, there are 90 patios across the city that fall under the bylaw ’s jurisdiction. Fifty-six are already in compliance with the two-metre clearance requirement, and 55 — not necessarily those in the first group — comply with the universal-access requirement.
The city hired a consultant to look at every non-compliant patio and offer owners opportunities for reconfiguration, including changes such as moving the patio onto street parking space or closer to the curb, detached from the building.
“We’re working literally on a day-to-day basis with each of the patio owners to get them compliant for 2019,” Curry said.
Patio owners have until Oct. 31 to submit their plans for summer 2019. The city has dedicated some funding to help ease the transition — from moving city infrastructure to reducing patio fees for those who choose to meet the bylaw standards early.
“We’ve pitched some options to them, and of course they have to figure out what works best for their business. The ball’s back in their court now,” Curry said.
Why shouldn’t someone in a wheelchair have the same access as someone who is able-bodied and can walk …