Opinion: D.C.'s new streatery rules are a costly miscalculation

Addressing issues in D.C.’s dining scene is notoriously fraught. Despite our best intentions to support the restaurant industry, someone in the sector always seems to get burned. This Fall, the city government’s latest effort will claim another victim: streateries. 

On Nov. 30, the city’s temporary streatery program, first instituted during the pandemic, officially expires. Businesses looking to make their outdoor dining structures permanent will be required to pay $20 per square foot for streatery space as well as additional fees for protective barriers. As reported by WTOP, some small business owners estimate the operating costs will now range from $5,000 to $6,000 a month for restaurants, up to $72,000 a year. At a time when D.C.’s dining scene is struggling to keep up with rising costs of goods, labor, and decreased patron traffic, adding these fees and regulations is a punishing tax on the hospitality industry.

The program’s end will have a particularly serious impact on 18th Street in Adams Morgan. The vibrant thoroughfare for some of D.C.’s best restaurants, music, nightlife, and more has been in the crosshairs of streatery critics for years, and it seems those critics may yet get their way. There are currently 33 streateries on 18th Street. When the temporary program ends, only three businesses plan to make their streateries permanent, WTOP reports. Three.

The math on removing streateries doesn’t add up. When D.C.’s outdoor dining structures shut down, the newly vacant street space will likely retreat to its pre-pandemic use: parking. Existing metered parking spaces on 18th Street cost occupants $2.30 per hour. If the parking space is occupied 80% of the time during enforced hours, it will result in a liberally estimated $700 in monthly revenues for the government, about $8,400 a year. But remember, the new streatery guidelines in Adams Morgan will cost small businesses up to $72,000 a year, a rate more than 8 times the asking rate of metered parking. If the costs incurred by small businesses were to apply to those parking on 18th Street, a single curbside spot would cost nearly $20 an hour. 

New fees are especially nonsensical considering that D.C.’s streateries likely already pay for themselves. Sales tax rates on meals across the city sit at 10%. If an average Adams Morgan dinner check is a conservative $25, then streateries out-raise parking spots with just 280 diners a month, or an average of about 9 patrons a night.

A guest opinion piece in the Washington Post in July stated that the streateries were “ruining historic Georgetown” and made a plea to President Donald Trump to intercede on behalf of the neighborhood in the war on outdoor dining. While I don’t think that an invasion of streatery infrastructure warrants the attention of the Commander in Chief, I am in strong agreement with the piece’s underlying argument: we need permanent solutions to streateries in D.C. — but for their improvement, not their removal. 

Small business owners agree. In the District Department of Transportation’s 2021 Streatery Program survey, 87% of small businesses reported an increase in revenue (34% on average) because of the program. An overwhelming 89% of streatery permit holders supported making the Streatery Program permanent. 

It’s true that the temporary streatery program can create some challenges: traffic adjustments, accessibility issues, and rats (good Lord the rats). But over time, our traffic patterns adjusted. Despite what some critics would prefer you to believe, the sky didn’t fall. Police still responded to community calls. Commuters made it to work when they were called back into the office. And if the city wanted to address accessibility problems and rodent issues, a path towards permanent infrastructure is an obvious way to create a built environment that is accessible for people and not for rats. 

Perhaps the most common critique I hear from streatery critics in D.C. is that, while they may have been a necessity during the pandemic for social distancing purposes, they are now a relic of a bygone era. (Notably, some restaurateurs have said D.C.’s dining scene is experiencing a “Pandemic 2.0” since Trump’s federal takeover of Washington). These critics are correct. Streateries are a pandemic holdover. They were implemented at a time when we collectively agreed we needed to create ways for people to be together, safely, in their community and in-person. If streateries are a pandemic relic, then they’re a monument to a moment when we correctly ordered our local politics around building community and creating a built environment that fosters maximum public benefit. We would be wise to re-commit ourselves to this principle again.