Dallas (WBAP/KLIF News) – If you build it, they will come…but if there aren’t any parking spaces, they’ll park on neighborhood streets. That’s controversy over outdoor bar and restaurant patios, says Dallas City Council member Mark Clayton.
“If you have a restaurant indoors, you have to have a certain amount of parking spaces for the amount of people indoors,” said Clayton. “But if you have any of your seating outside, you don’t have to provide any parking for that.”
That’s only in the case of seating that has no overhead cover; if there is overhead cover, the ordinance applies just as it does for indoor seating.
Clayton said no one on the Council wants to put any bar or restaurant out of business, and they don’t want more concrete in Dallas. But he says there are developers who plan to skirt the seating requirements by building full sized restaurants with nothing but outdoor seating, with no overhead cover. Consequently, they wouldn’t have to provide parking spaces, which Clayton said is unfair to people who live in the surrounding neighborhoods.
“Developers are taking advantage of the rules, and they’re intentionally creating restaurants where they don’t have to have parking, knowing that it’s going into the neighborhood, against the neighborhood’s wishes, because there’s a loophole in the ordinance,” Clayton said.
At a public meeting at the Jonsson Central Library in downtown Dallas, an overflow crowd was, for the most part, against the idea of making all establishments with outdoor seating provide additional parking. Some said that would be a cost restaurants and bars couldn’t absorb, and would put them out of business. Others argued that people should be driving less, anyway, and taking public transportation or using ride sharing services when they go out.
But some people who live near entertainment districts complained that bar and restaurant patrons already park on their neighborhood streets, sometimes blocking their driveways, and sometimes making it necessary to park blocks away from their homes.
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