Pop-up patios coming to Thunder Bay restaurants

People fancying a meal or drink in the sun this summerare going to have a lot of options soon, as the City of Thunder Bay launches a new pilot project that will allow temporary, pop-up patios atrestaurants.

The two-year pilot will allow for four of these patios in each of the city's four business associations and improvement areas, for a total of 16. The patios will be placed on the sidewalk out front of the establishment.

"The city has always been able to, in some cases, allow sidewalk patios, but they needed to be fairly small to still allow pedestrians to go by and maintain required clearances," said Joel DePeuter,the city's manager of realty services. "The businesses came to the city with the idea that we permit sidewalk patios that can utilize the entire width of the sidewalk."

"This is something that's being done in other cities and working successfully, so we though that we might try this in Thunder Bay."

Restrictions in place

There will be some restrictions, however. For example, patios must be enclosed with a non-climbable railing or other barrier, and they can't be used as a back doorto increase the maximum occupancy of a restaurant.

"If they are looking to increase their occupancy, they would require some clearance from the building division," DePeuter said.

Patios can't exceed the length of a restaurant, and can't obstruct fire hydrants, fire connections or firefighter access to a building. They also can't obstruct transit stops or loading zones.

In addition, restaurants must still allow pedestrian access around a pop-up patio, so they'll be required to build a boardwalk or other walkway around it. The boardwalk can extend into parallel parking spots in front of the restaurant. It can't, however, affect more than four of those spots, and can't be built across accessible parking spots.

"Initially, we were considering a one-year pilot," DePeuter said. "But recognizing there'll be considerable cost to build these, we think that two years is a good start."

Feedback sought

DePeuter said the deadline for applications is May 30, and the city hopes to have its successful applicants picked within a week of the deadline.

He said the successful applicants would then need to sign an agreement with the city, so the patios could start popping up by late June or early July.

Feedback would then be sought from the participating businesses, as well as the public, and presented to council, DePeuter said.

"When the businesses were proposing the program to the city, they were noting that they felt that the sidewalk patios would add additional activity to the streets, and increase visitorship and spending, and benefit the downtowns," he said.

"So we want ot hear form the businesses about whether they feel that objective was accomplished."