The City of Ottawa’s plan to reinstate full fees for restaurant patios after a two-year, low-fee pilot project along Preston Street sparked criticism from a leading voice for Centretown businesses.
Lori Mellor, executive director of the Preston Street BIA, has urged the city to reconsider the planned restoration of full patio fees, arguing that reduced rates do promote the creation and retention of outdoor restaurant spaces and help enliven retail areas.
“The City of Hamilton has recently completely waived patio fees,” says Mellor.
“Their justification for this step was that patios attract tourists to the city, create a more vibrant downtown and their own police force supports patios because they put people in the downtown, putting eyes on the street which discourages crime.”
The pilot project started in May 2011. According to a staff report recently submitted to city councillors, “Preston Street BIA argued that a reduction in the fee would increase the opportunities for new patios animating the recently reconstructed street.”
To test the theory, the city reduced the daily fees for patios — only on Preston Street — by 43 per cent. According to the report, patio owners normally pay the city $1.31 per square metre for every day that outdoor seating is available for customers, weather permitting.
During the pilot project, those fees were reduced for the patios in Little Italy to 55 cents per square metre per day.
When the committee approved the project in 2010, its success was to be measured by “the amount of new growth in the number of patios and the retention of the existing patios,” according to the report.
But after assessing the results of the rate reduction, city staff concluded that the lowered fee didn’t really have much of an effect on promoting new patios in the area, with Little Italy experiencing no more patio construction activity than other parts of the city where the full fee was maintained.
During the pilot project, La Roma Restaurant opened a patio and Stoneface Dolly’s Restaurant chose to keep its patio open — something its owners indicated they wouldn’t have done if the usual, higher fee had been kept in place, says Mellor.
The reduced fee definitely encouraged La Roma to open its patio, says Maria Papalia, the restaurant’s owner.
However, the report indicated that about $51,000 worth of patio fees were sacrificed by the city to undertake the low-fee pilot project on Preston Street and recommended that the fee be reset to the $1.31 rate for this summer.
“Patios improve the general attractiveness of a main street,” Mellor says, adding that they also increase general spending.
Patrons who use patios tend to spend more at restaurants and more in the surrounding area, she says.
Mellor says she and other BIA directors in the city are still lobbying to reduce patio fees permanently.
“The downtown BIAs propose that the patio rate be set at 75 cents per square metre per day,” she says. “This rate still generates revenue for the city, but at a price that will not create disincentives for patio owners to open.”