Good afternoon, my name is Dan Strauss.
I'm the City Council Member from District 6, representing Fremont, Green Lake, Finney Ridge, Crown Hill, Ballard, and so many other sub-neighborhoods.
We are here today on Ballard Avenue to discuss street cafes and sidewalk cafes.
I would be remiss to share with you it's the 17th of May, Syntende Mai, which here in Ballard we traditionally have had the largest Syntende Mai parade outside in the world outside of Norway.
It's Norway's Constitution Day.
as well as Seattle's sister city Bergen is represented in a mural at Bergen Place of that partnership.
While we do have celebrations occurring across the neighborhood today for Sint Namaai, we are here to celebrate a new feature of our city, the cafe streets.
We're here to discuss my and Council President's legislation to make cafe streets and sidewalk cafes a permanent feature of our city.
This bill that is before the full council this afternoon extends free sidewalk curbspace vending and cafe permits for an additional year for a free cost so no cost to the business owners and establishes the permitting pathways and what SDOT needs to do as far as outreach and engagement to make this a permanent permit for perpetuity.
What is important to understand about this legislation is we took a pilot program and before a pilot program can become a permanent feature of our city, we need to have this interim moment where we reflect on what's worked well, what hasn't worked well.
and make those changes to ensure that in the future we have a permit and a proposal that meets everyone's needs and meets all ages and abilities for our residents.
This legislation creates the pathway to permanency by outlining which outreach needs to occur.
They will be presenting a proposal to council in December of 2021. They could have spent this last year doing this outreach necessary to create a permanent proposal.
However, they spent their time issuing permits.
and I applaud this effort because that means more businesses throughout Seattle have these sidewalk cafe permits and sidewalk cafe permits than if they'd been doing this outreach.
So we now have more time to do the needed outreach and SDOT has been focused on getting these permits out the door.
When our pandemic hit, our businesses were thrown into turmoil.
They were forced to shut down and having to change how they do business on a day's basis, depending on public health guidelines.
These pergolas and sidewalk cafes provide a moment of consistency for businesses to be able to operate in changing health conditions.
Last year they had to capitalize on good weather throughout the winter.
More structures like these have have come to place and what was not clear is how long would these permits last and so today we're here to say we want them here forever.
Last year Seattle Department of Transportation started new temporary uses of our right-of-ways which allowed for programs like this.
Sidewalk and street cafe program gives our businesses the ability to use our public space for their with their entrepreneurial drive so that we're able to have a strong economy and a vibrant neighborhood.
As we look towards a permanent program we need to address how much these permits will cost and what and how they're set up so that all ages and abilities can use them.
Businesses need certainty and that is the desire of the legislation before us today at City Council.
We need to make sure that businesses know that they can operate in inclement weather, when it's rainy, when it's cold, and then also they need to have the certainty to know that the investments they make in these structures will be able to last enough time for them to have a return on their investment.
And so this summer will be the first full summer that we have street cafes and I am so excited to see how our businesses use this opportunity to make our city more vibrant and exciting.
In Ballard specifically, Ballard Avenue is also used by the farmer's market.
And I have to applaud Doug and all of the businesses along Ballard Avenue for looking at how we share space.
The farmer's markets use these pergolas during the farmer's market period and then are converted back to business operations.
Public space is just that, public.
And this is an example of how we can have multiple different uses in our public space and give businesses in the farmer's market the certainty they need to survive.
I am proud of how our city has responded to our pandemic and there is more work to be done.
Along with the pathway to make street cafes a permanent feature in our city, we will be hosting a design charrette with many stakeholders on how we make Ballard Avenue's cafe street even better and how we get it to a pathway to permanency.
I hope that every neighborhood in this city gets and gets to have a street dedicated to business and I hope that and what we are endeavoring to do in this design charrette is to make the process replicable so that once we do it here in Ballard it can be done all across the city.
Through this last year of uncertainty we have continued to plot a pathway forward for equity equitable recovery with the certainty that businesses that need with the certainty businesses need to be successful.
We'll now hear from businesses about how they've been impacted and before we do so I just want to take a moment to thank Elliot Helmbrook and Sabrina Bullew from the mayor's office, Elise Nelson and her entire public space team and director Zimbabwe of SDOT Amanda Pleasant-Brown and Calvin Chow of City Council staff, Mike Stewart and Devin Reynolds of the Ballard Alliance, Doug Farr of the Farmer's Market, Anna Zievarts for keeping our focus on all ages and abilities, and every single business owner that has made this a success.
As I said to the group behind me many times over, the city got out of the way, the city provided the permits, and the businesses did the rest.
The local businesses made this a success.
And so we'll be hearing today from Mike Stewart of the Ballard Alliance, followed by Max Genereau from Hattie's Hat and Sunset Tavern, followed by Hannah Carter from Bitterroot Barbecue, then Doug Farr from the Seattle Market Farmers Market Association, and Ana Zievarts of Disability Rights Washington.
And then I will come back to close this out.
Thank you all.
Let me find my mask.
Thank you.
Thanks, Mike.
Good afternoon.
My name's Mike Stewart.
I'm executive director of the Ballard Alliance.
The Ballard Alliance is an organization that represents hundreds of businesses in the Ballard core and thousands of residents as well.
You know, a year ago today, it was chaos, right?
It was chaos on Ballard Avenue and all around the city.
And we had to shift and sort of adapt the kinds of things that we do to really support our businesses during during the pandemic and during the time of recovery.
Certainly, it is a well known fact that the economic consequences from the pandemic were significant.
And for restaurant owners and for retail owners alike here on Ballard Avenue, it was an absolute struggle.
with a lot of the regulations that were in place to be able to bring businesses inside.
So this opportunity to create these outdoor spaces, to use our existing infrastructure and then create new infrastructure to allow restaurants to expand and have safe outdoor seating was absolutely amazing.
and on the retail side to be able to have merchandise displays as well.
I really appreciate the work and leadership of Council Member Dan Strauss along with the Mayor's Office and the Department of Transportation last year in working together with us and working together with the business owners and the farmers market to come up with this solution which includes a temporary closure or not closure but a temporary reconfiguration of Ballard Avenue to one-way traffic to accommodate the street cafes that you see here today.
The results have been hugely successful and I just can't emphasize enough how important it was for these businesses to have this opportunity to expand outside and be able to recover, not wholly, but make it through the pandemic, make it through 2020. And as we are in 2021, particularly excited about this legislation because it gives certainty to these businesses that they know that they're going to be able to continue to operate.
And even though we hope we hope that we are in the waning days of this pandemic, we also know that there was a lot of time and a lot of A lot of finances, frankly, that were lost.
So this ability to continue it provides not only certainty to stay open, but also a great opportunity to be able to recover some of those losses from last year and early this year.
Ballard Avenue is unique and it's an amazing space and there's really this great symbiotic relationship between the restaurants, between the retailers, and also with the Ballard Sunday Farmers Market.
Together those things I think make an incredible environment and by supporting any one of those If you're supporting the market, you're helping the restaurants.
If you're supporting retailers, you're helping the restaurants.
So it all just really works together.
And I think we've seen now, we have a very great case study of seeing how well this works in our community.
We're excited.
I'm excited to be able to continue working with the council member, our business owners, and the farmers market as we take the next step and start to look at what Ballard Avenue could look like in the future.
Thank you.
Hi, thank you.
I'm Max Genereau from Hatties Hat in the Sunset Tavern.
Without repeating what's been said already, I cannot thank the city enough for allowing us to do this.
SDOT, the mayor's office, Councilman Strauss, excuse me, and Mike and the Ballard Alliance for kind of leading the charge and harnessing us as retailers to move down this path.
Like many people, this was the most stressful year of my life.
I've got bags under my eyes and gray hair that I didn't have a year ago.
And it was awful.
And as I tried to determine, like, how am I going to survive this?
And the government programs, the PPP loans were great.
But at one point, and I still am, I'm like $1.5 million in debt for my four businesses.
And I trust that that's going to change.
I trust that I will get forgiveness on some of those loans.
But at this point still, when I add those numbers up, it's terrifying.
And to survive and come out of that when the city allowed us to do this, that was a great shot in the arm.
And as I saw how it functioned for us on the street, we initially started with tents, most of us.
And as we saw those get blown down in winter storms, Destroyed and we kept buying more tents and trying to buy better tents or trying to rent commercial tents Which were expensive.
I mean so already we're losing money most of us personally, I can show you the numbers I was losing money and I started renting a tent for $1,000 a month on top of all the other things that we were spending money on and with a very small customer base that we had in the early days of the pandemic and in mid days.
So when we got the opportunity to build something like this, and I have to thank John and Tommy from the Ballery Cut who spearheaded this movement of the actual wooden pergolas, it was phenomenal.
And I saw them build theirs and I was like, all right, I have to do this.
And it was a leap of faith at that point because we didn't have a formal okay from SDOT to do that.
And we gambled and we did it anyway.
What happened was it came out really nice.
And as you can see, community loves it.
The customers that is and the residents really enjoy being able to walk down Ballard Avenue next to all these beautiful old buildings and sit outside and look at the beautiful buildings while they're dining and drinking.
And that has helped me survive.
as a business owner.
It, as I move into recovery now, which is a huge thing about this and what Strauss, Dr. Dan Strauss is doing, is that it's going to lead us to like, like recovering because I'm by no means going to be out of debt on June 30th when we go back to normal business as usual.
I have a lot of making up to do and a lot of debt to repay and, and If I can get back to having full capacity inside of Hatties as well as extra capacity outside of Hatties, those numbers and those increased sales will help me do that.
I'm counting on it and looking forward to it actually.
I feel confident in all of this that with all of these things going on and the ability to have outdoor seating and have a street cafe, I'm gonna be okay.
And a year ago, I didn't know that.
That's where the gray hair and the bags under my eyes come from.
It was a terrifying experience.
And I'm not trying to minimize the amount of death that there's been from this pandemic, because that's the biggest thing that's happened here.
And so I'm just glad to be moving forward and glad that our community likes what we're doing here.
So thank you.
Hello, my name is Hannah Carter, I'm the co owner of Bitterroot and Mammoth as well.
And I'm going to echo everything that Max just said it was absolutely terrifying year and it's been full of a lot of pivoting every which way.
These cafes are very much part of that in this iteration is by far the best.
I had a tent that was against that window at one point across the street during a storm.
It was very terrifying and expensive.
And so we have been through a lot.
And I think that's pretty well established at this point.
But I think the one thing that has been a big takeaway is just we've been stuck doing all of this pivoting and takeout and delivery so we're just putting food in boxes and sending them with drivers or not really getting to see people's faces and we're in the hospitality industry and we're a place that people come together and I have to say it's so lovely to have these outside structures that make our customers feel safe and comfortable to come back out, re-engage with their friendships, and really start to heal together as a community as we're coming out of this.
And so I just want to say that I'm incredibly appreciative that we have this opportunity.
I see it as a way forward permanently in the future and being part of our community.
And I'm so excited to see all of our community back out and see their smiling faces safely and comfortably out on the street.
So thank you.
My name is Doug Farr that's spelled F-A-R-R.
I'm the general manager of the Seattle Farmers Market Association and the manager of the Ballard Farmers Markets.
We've been operating the market here for about 20 years down Ballard Avenue between Vernon going up to Market Street and on a typical Sunday we before COVID we would have about 140 vendors setting up.
A year ago I had 26 vendors that were set up from Market Street all the way down.
They were spaced 20 feet apart and it was a drive-thru farmers market.
We were one of the first markets that reopened after being shut down due to COVID.
We operated that market for quite a while while we tried to remodel it and then we slowly were able to get back into having a regular market.
On a typical Sunday, my vendors show up, set up a regular tent, put down lots of weights.
And on a bad weather day, that requires a lot of cinder block weights.
Thanks to the Ballard community, the Ballard Alliance, as well as the businesses here, working with the Ballard Farmers Markets, they came to us and they wanted to build something of which worked for the farmers markets as well as worked for them as restaurants.
On behalf of all of the farmers, as well as the vendors which set up at the farmers markets, we love these outdoor cafes.
The businesses work with us, they allow us to use the streets, they give us permission to use the street to set up the farmers markets, and then we break down and then they use them, so it's a win-win situation.
My farmers don't have to bring an extra 200 pounds of weights on those windy days.
They got something strong and sturdy and the customers love them because they can actually step in and be under covered and stuff like that.
A lot of the customers which come to the farmer's market come here because this is one of the best farmer's market locations as well as community.
It really is a community loved farmer's market and my farmers love bringing their products to this neighborhood.
Working with the Ballard Alliance and Councilmember Strauss and all of the businesses here on behalf of the farmers markets, we say thank you.
Because this really does assist the farmers markets and assist my vendors in such a positive way that we strongly support.
Asking the city to please make these permanent, we strongly put our names behind this.
And it really is something of which the community is very appreciative of as well as the farmers market.
Thank you, everybody.
Hi, Anna Zivartz.
I'm the Director of the Disability Mobility Initiative at Disability Rights Washington, and that's A-N-N-A-Z-I-V-A-R-T-S.
And I'm excited to be here today because Cafe Streets allows us to start to dream about all the exciting things we can do on our streets, all the exciting ways that the public right-of-way can be used that aren't just parking cars and driving cars.
And for those of us in the disability community who can't or don't drive, having access to thriving local businesses in our community is really a wonderful and important thing.
At the same time, we need to remember that the sidewalks are, for those of us who can't drive, and for those of us with mobility disabilities, often our only option to get around.
And when they're blocked, for whatever reason, or inaccessible, when they're not maintained, we lose that access.
And so we're excited about this program.
We were excited to partner with SDOT last year to create a video to educate CAFE and other business owners about the responsibilities and the the guidelines for how to set up these cafes in a way that they don't block access to folks with disabilities.
And we just encourage folks to be familiar with those guidelines, to follow those guidelines, because it is so important to keep our streets accessible so that all of us can get around our communities and enjoy them.
Thanks.
So you have now heard from all of the people that have made this happen.
As I started, as I said earlier, the city of Seattle got out of the way, issued the permits, and the folks behind me did the rest to organize, set these structures up, use their entrepreneurial drive in the face of weather blowing their tents everywhere.
Some of the things that I just want to recognize is that Ballard has always had a strong economy.
That economy has been based in Fisherman's Terminal with all of the fishing vessels.
Every boat you see out there is a small business employing directly and indirectly thousands in our community.
On this block behind me is the Deep Sea Fisherman's Union.
who represents these folks.
And as Ballard has changed and our Market Street has moved from just being at Fisherman's Terminal to being at Fisherman's Terminal and on Ballard Avenue, this program before us, we have an opportunity to really shape the way that we use our streets.
We have the pathway to make street cafes a permanent feature of our city.
We have the entrepreneurial drive of business owners to make this a success.
And now we have the certainty businesses need to thrive and succeed.
With this certainty, I'm excited to see how our small businesses shift this summer to be ready for winter and be able to set their pergola stake permanently in the future.
Council President would have been with us because, but as many of you know, there has been a death in the family.
One of the reasons that Council President Gonzalez was key in this legislation is because her family knows specifically the needs of restauranteurs and the importance of this legislation.
So I won't say anything more other than happy Sintemai to all of my Norwegian family in the city and for all of those who are Norwegians just for today, thank you all for coming out and also thank you to award-winning Seattle Channel for coming out today as well.
Thank you.
Are you thinking about expanding this to other areas that you know are maybe not within the pilot program and not within this expansion you know other zones in the city that may have businesses that would benefit?
Great question.
So the question was are we expanding this to be in other other areas other than just Ballard Avenue?
The answer is yes.
So a little bit of policy background because I am a policy nerd is that these types of permits have always been available by the city.
They have not been necessarily available in the way that we see them utilized today and they come with a cost.
And so what this pathway to permanency is doing is understanding what additional flexibility we need to put into the permits.
what the cost will be because the cost was previously in my opinion prohibitive and so we want to make sure that that cost is right sized and so what this bill does is it creates that pathway for us to understand what is and is not going to be contained in the final regulations and it makes sure that these these permits are free for another year.
because we want businesses to be able to have that, as Max said, that opportunity to recover before we're charging them a fee.
Now, Elise Nelson and her team is a fee-based recovery program, so they have been operating in the red all year long because we know that we need to be supporting our small businesses.
So in short, permits are already accessible throughout the city.
As you've seen throughout the city, people using sidewalk cafes.
What we have here is a little unique with the entire street being used and that is a program that we are hoping to see replicable across the city.
Just to expand on that then, when you say the cafe streets for this extension for the year, are you only talking about this one or any place that has a sidewalk outside area right now?
Great question.
The question was, is this legislation regarding just street cafes or any tent that you see in front of a business?
And the answer is any single tent, any pergola, any use of public space for a restaurant or retail.
It was brought up in the, I think by, I don't know, it was brought up that it is also for retailers.
It's not just restaurateurs.
You can see Prism across the street.
You can see Kavu up the street.
They are standard goods up the street.
These are retailers using this public space as well.
So it is for any restaurant that you see or retailer across the city that is using the space in front of their shop for business.
Was the city helping or did they help with the payment of building these permanent structures?
They did not.
So the question was, did the city help with the payment for the pergolas?
And they did not.
And that's why I have been so anxious this entire year to creating this pathway for permanency, because we need to make sure that businesses are able to recoup the cost for the lumber.
Looking at this, I would guess that this is what, $5,000, $10,000 worth of lumber?
Something like that.
We've got, I mean lumber costs are up right now too.
Oh yes, my guess is that this pergola in front of us is five to ten thousand dollars worth of lumber.
With lumber, with the lumber prices up right now it's not a great time to be buying lumber.
I have been told that most of this lumber has come from limb back lumber on Market Street.
Do you have a number for how many exist in the city, not the whole street, but individual places that are utilizing the free permit right now?
No, I am not that much of a policy wonk, but I can get you that today.
Yeah.
Can I actually ask Mike Stewart a question, or one of the business owners, just what do you think would be a free, a fair price for these permits?
If they're currently prohibitively expensive when you have to pay for them, what would be a fair price?
That's a good question and the answer is I don't know what the current price is today to find out if we could do this or not.
So I think that might be something that central staff could look at and get back and get you that number.
I mean I think sort of a broad answer is I think that absolutely businesses would be willing to pay some form of fee as long as it's sort of in alignment with what makes business sense.