Georgetowners React to Streateries Petition
By • October 10, 2023 3 1060
“Where do you stand on streateries?” we asked in our Sept. 28 online story “Georgetown Coalition for Public Spaces Petitions to Improve Streateries.”
In response, we heard from many residents and organizations sharing their views on Georgetown’s streateries program. Here’s a sampling of letters and comments we received. More reactions can be seen in the comments online below the article.
If you’d like to share your thoughts on the matter, send them to: editorial@georgetowner.com. Thank you for engaging in this critical dialogue for Georgetown.
Citizens Association of Georgetown Board of Directors:
While the streateries pilot has brought the welcomed vibrancy of outdoor dining and additional foot traffic to Georgetown, it has come at the high cost of historic neighborhood standards. Too much of the streateries infrastructure and furniture is shabby and poorly maintained, and it is past time for the BID to establish and enforce aesthetic standards appropriate to the historic district.
CAG does not support the BID’s request for a two-year permit but would support a one-year permit if (but only if) the BID agrees: (1) to go through the OGB’s normal process, and (2) to implement the OGB’s guidance within the timeframes established by the OGB. Any effort by the BID to circumvent the OGB, such as going to the Mayor’s Agent, or curtail CAG’s ability to review and comment on OGB applications, would be viewed by CAG as completely unacceptable.
Pamla Moore, Former Chair of ANC 2E
I am Pamla Moore, former Chair of ANC2E, former President of the Citizens Association of Georgetown and former Chair of Friends of Rose Park. I want to request that the Georgetown BID Streatery Pilot not be extended for an additional two years. Georgetown has been a wonderful place to live and work and over the many years I have lived here what has made it special is the charm that it provides visitors and residents. I support outdoor dining and certainly support the wonderful independent restaurants. And am particularly pleased that more new independent places to dine have decided to locate in our village. However, I find the majority of the current Streateries are poorly cared for, with cheap tables, chairs, and plastic ‘decorations.’ They distract from the attractiveness of our community. Please allow well constructed Streateries ONLY in front of attractive restaurants. Extend the BID permit for no more than 12 months and that a ‘solution’ abides by aesthetic guidelines as set forth by professional OGB members. I live in Vail Colorado each summer for four months and they manage outdoor eating options beautifully and actually increase visitors to stay and dine. It can be done.
Monica Roaché, Former ANC 2E Commissioner
When folks come over to visit my home they often make comments on the aesthetic decline of Georgetown due to barriers, tables, and signage. Also, they don’t understand how businesses are even surviving where there aren’t a lot of parking options. Why pay to park on a lot to shop or get a service when other areas in the city do provide street parking? Hopefully, this time the city will listen to the residents and Georgetown business owners and reduce blocking parking spaces for tables, especially on streets where there are no eating establishments. There should be a limit on the number of restaurants permitted to have tables. Tables should be seasonal and have a maximum space capacity for the area they can use. “I hope the Georgetown Business Improvement District (BID) will compromise with the community and agree to common-sense adjustments to preserve the beauty and charm of Georgetown.”
Eileen McGrath, Realtor, Washington Fine Properties
As a long-time and proud resident of Georgetown, I hope we can all come together to support our Village restaurants and shops while preserving the historic nature of our community. As Georgetown is an internationally recognized destination, I feel we have an obligation to preserve the aesthetics that have been so carefully guarded by historic organizations and residents alike. The current jersey barriers and mismatched overhangs and plastic sidewalks that become slippery when wet and rat hotels provided an emergency boost to our businesses during a world-wide pandemic. In recovering from that extreme circumstance, it is time for us to re-imagine the possibilities for outdoor dining that best suit our very distinctive historic Village.
Sara Swabb, Founder and Creative Director of Storie Collective
I’m Sara Swabb. I own Storie Collective, a thoughtfully curated interiors shop, on Wisconsin Avenue at P Street. I also have a robust interior design business and live on P Street in a house I renovated with my husband and two young daughters. My projects have been featured in the New York Times, House Beautiful, Veranda Magazine, and the Washington Post. Georgetown is my forever home and my husband and I have deeply invested in this community between our home, the shop and design business. My personal, business concern is that Storie Collective does not have a makeshift sidewalk out front, so we are the designated loading dock all day long. Our window is covered by delivery trucks which serve all businesses up and down Wisconsin Avenue. The idling trucks are loud and the flashing hazard lights shine inside our business during operating hours – not a great atmosphere for both customers and employees. And, on P Street and our residential parking is always full of non-resident cars because of the lack of parking on Wisconsin Avenue.
As a compromise, I’d like to suggest that the streateries should only be directly in front of operating restaurants and with strict aesthetic enforcements. As we are a historic district, we have governing bodies that guide our residential projects and should do so for temporary public spaces as well. Georgetown is a charming area with cobblestone streets and important architecture that we should honor and preserve. We deserve to have streateries that reflect the beauty of our old-world village and make us proud to come home and do business here each day.
Zoe Feldman, Interior Designer, Book Hill
Hello, I’m Zoe Feldman. I’m an interior designer and I have an atelier on the Book Hill section of Georgetown. I spend my days making homes beautiful for my clients. I have had spreads in Architectural Digest, House Beautiful, and Domino Magazine. My staff and I like outdoor dining in Georgetown and we would like to see it continue. However, we would like to see it continue in a way befitting the historic character of Georgetown itself. Cheap, unattractive furniture ranging from adirondack chairs to bistro tables that are in all stages of degradation are not befitting this beautiful, notable neighborhood. I do hope you will require some aesthetic improvements to the streateries and I also firmly believe there should only be decking directly in front of restaurants. A one-year trial with a reassessment at the end of 2024 to see if things have improved feels like a fair compromise.
Kristin and John Cecchi, Co-Owners of Cecchi Homes
I am Kristin Cecchi. Together with my husband, John Cecchi, we own Cecchi Homes. We have renovated more than 30 homes in Georgetown and personally lived in three of those. We love Georgetown for its beauty, charm and strict adherence to specific aesthetic guidelines, as challenging as those can sometimes be for small developers. We’ve enjoyed the outdoor dining that’s popped up all over Georgetown, but we’re deeply concerned about the lack of design cohesion/implementation. We’d like to see the streateries continue, but also believe it’s way past time to ensure they reflect the beautiful community in which they reside.
We suggest the following: 1) Streateries directly in front of restaurants ONLY; 2) Holistic design with an enforcement component; and, 3) One year check-in at the end of 2024 so the community has a better understanding of the progress metrics. Implementing these simple requests feels like a fair compromise and one I hope the Georgetown BID will agree to in order to show they are willing to work with the community.
Daphna Peled, Owner of Pillar & Post
Greetings, my name is Daphna Peled and I own an English antiques and home decor shop called Pillar & Post in the Book Hill section of Georgetown. I am also a Georgetown resident on Q Street with my son and husband, and my parents live around the corner on 31st Street.
My family and I are deeply committed to Georgetown and live here in large part because we appreciate its strict aesthetic guidelines which make Georgetown so special and work to preserve its beauty.
While I am supportive of outdoor dining and certainly want to see small restaurants flourish in our community, I am extremely disappointed in the direction the aesthetics of these restaurants on our public streets have been taking. Some streateries are quite lovely, but many have cheap furniture, poorly managed trash, umbrellas with advertising for beer and liquor, and are not in keeping with historic Georgetown.
The Business Improvement District has had three years to work on this pilot and things haven’t improved. In fact, they have deteriorated. I want to be accommodating and give them another year to try to figure it out, but two years is not acceptable. Their track record leads me to believe that the aesthetics of outdoor dining probably won’t improve.
The original time-sensitive justifications for the creation of many of these streateries and wider sidewalks have long passed, yet the necessary oversight and aesthetic management is still not occurring. As a result, there remain unneeded wider sidewalks that create congestion and a lack of parking, and many unused streateries that are simply eye sores. The beauty and character of Georgetown are suffering.
I am not alone in these views. I hear frequently from my patrons at the shop about how the aesthetics of Georgetown are declining as a result of these many unkempt streateries. And nearly 1000 people have signed a petition requesting very specific, common-sense actions to improve these streateries! I am hopeful that our views will be taken seriously for the benefit of Georgetown’s future.
Carrington Tarr, Resident on P Street
My name is Carrington Tarr and I’ve lived on P street with my husband and three now-college-aged children since 2001. We moved to Georgetown for the beauty of its historic neighborhoods mixed with great restaurants and retail establishments nearby. We love the old-word charm and beauty of both spaces — the residential and commercial.
We acknowledge it was important to have outdoor dining and social distancing during the pandemic. We also believe many of the outdoor dining establishments have enhanced the vibrancy in Georgetown. But the general state of the extended sidewalks and streateries is simply bad, with trash and dead plants and a hodgepodge of planters, tables, and chairs strewn about. I think that’s something everybody agrees on.
We’d like to see outdoor dining continue, but aesthetics improve. This Pilot program has been running for three years, and I keep thinking there will be a time when the expectation for our public spaces will be in line with the expectation for our residential spaces. But that hasn’t happened, and even worse, it has gone in the other direction.
Some serious aesthetic improvements need to occur in these public spaces. I know the BID permit requests an extension of two years. I think that’s too long for us to “wait-and-see” if things will get better. An extension of one year to allow the BID to improve the look and feel of its Pilot would be a more-than-fair compromise.
Colman Riddell, Interior Designer, Colman Riddell Interiors
I am Colman Riddell. I live on R Street with my husband and two children. My parents live on 34th Street across from Volta Park. I am an interior designer with work featured in the Washington Post and Washington Life. I currently serve as Chair of the House Committee at the Georgetown Club. I am writing to kindly ask that you not extend the Georgetown BID Streatery permit in its current form. My family and I really like the outdoor dining, but we also believe it is time for the streateries to get their aesthetic acts in order. There are far too many types of furniture and a lot of it is in disrepair. The platforms themselves weren’t built to last and there is a lot of wear and tear on them that is terribly unattractive and not suitable in historic Georgetown. We understand these things take time, but it has been three years and things haven’t improved … they’ve only gotten worse. I hope we can come to some sort of compromise to keep the dining, but with a few commonsense updates: 1) Dining directly in front of restaurants only; 2) Give the BID a year to see if they can enact what they promise; 3) Holistically decide the “look and feel” of the restaurant streateries so there is some cohesion to it all.
The fact is streateries are expensive and many restaurants (large or small) can not afford them, nor do they have the method or internal oversight to have them always on parade look and feel. Considering the furniture upkeep (due to weather) or the safety barrier requirements or the the staff alertness, if a business is expecting these to be a boon to their net bottom line, without anticipating and accepting and paying the cost to make them appropriate in appearance, safety, and occupancy (how many of these seats are actually necessary all the time), then their worth to the entirety of Georgetown is greatly diminished. Do landlords want to Take responsibility for them? Would they accept fines and the cost of corrective actions? Traffic and parking are already hindrances to non-resident Georgetown patrons, who frankly without which many of these restaurants would be unable to survive – its a question of critical mass isn’t it. Restaurants need out of town visitors.
A restaurants needs to serve XX covers to break even or YY covers to be profitable and the thought of adding seats at little or no cost overshadows the realization that streateries are, in and of them-self a perpetual drain on restaurant management and critical resources. From my view, as I travel through Gtown every single day, it seems M street is always looking messy – and often because of closed streateries adds to the feel of an empty and disheleved space. It does not aid in the overall attractiveness to the visitors or resident experience.
With all that said, I do think the wider sidewalks are a benefit to the Georgetown experience and if the streateries are restricted to just a few spaces, properly attended that also allow for proper ride share and drop off spaces out of harms way, these could be the benefit the forethought anticipated. But what do I know – I have only been operating restaurants in Georgetown for 40 years now!!!
As a proud resident of Georgetown for the past two decades, I am writing to advocate for the preservation and enhancement of Georgetown’s streateries.
Streateries represent a significant stride toward a more vibrant and livable urban environment. They serve as catalysts for social interaction, providing a communal space where our neighbors and visitors can come together and engage while bolstering our local businesses. By encouraging more people to utilize our sidewalks, streeteries also yield the added advantage of deterring crime and antisocial behavior.
More, when coupled with expanded sidewalks, streateries contribute substantially to the overall safety of our roadways. Before the onset of the pandemic, our Georgetown streets bore witness to an alarming average of 21 car crashes per month. Remarkably, following the introduction of streateries, that number dwindled to a mere nine crashes per month. As someone whose family lives, walks, and shops in Georgetown, I can attest to the tremendous enhancement in street safety that this initiative has afforded us.
Lastly, streateries serve as a haven not only for those who enjoy dining in an alfresco setting but also for our older residents and individuals with compromised immune systems, who understandably harbor concerns about the heightened risk of indoor dining. With the resurgence of COVID and SARS, now is unequivocally the worst possible time to consider dismantling or undermining our streateries.
In sum, streateries serve as champions of safety, concurrently fostering environments that inspire people to engage with their surroundings and with one another, thus enriching the overall urban experience. Georgetown requires more of this visionary approach, not less.
Georgetown Streateries are a nail in the coffin. I saw one flattened by a truck. Good thing no one was eating within it. Aesthetically they’re hideous no matter how constructed. One more reason to get the blank out of Georgetown. It is on a sad and slippery decline. After 3 and a half decades here, I think it’s time to head for the hills. The writing is on the street.