FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — The Fayetteville City Council voted Tuesday (July 14) to approve an emergency ordinance that amends a previous ordinance to make the permitting process easier for existing restaurants to open sidewalk cafes in paid public parking spaces.
“It’s an amazing way to create patio space in an area that predominately doesn’t have much room to grow,” said Omar Kasim, the owner of Plomo Quesadillas and Juice Palm on Dickson Street.
They have what’s called a parklet in a parking space in front of his business.
“I see this tremendously helping a lot of businesses, especially ones that don’t have patio seating," Kasim said. "It creates this patio culture that you see in Nashville or Austin or something like that on Dickson Street and enables us to use existing infrastructure to accomplish that."
This emergency ordinance means the process for a business to get a sidewalk café permit would be much quicker and there won’t be an application fee.
The city hopes this will give businesses another way to have more space so everyone can social distance.
Mayor Lioneld Jordan says he called this special meeting to help Fayetteville’s businesses survive this pandemic.
“The situation with our businesses and the businesses we are beginning to lose in the city. I wanted to give them every availability to do business during this pandemic,” Jordan said.
All the businesses that chose to put parklets in parking spaces will have to pay the daily parking fee. Since this is an emergency ordinance it will go into effect Wednesday (July 15).