Outdoor patios helped Toronto weather the pandemic’s darkest days. New rules may curb their use

Three years ago this week, the coronavirus pandemic arrived in Toronto. Looking back, it’s hard to feel like we’ve emerged from this hurting period stronger, or more resilient, or — given how the virus keeps circulating — even that we’ve emerged from it at all.

Have we rebuilt our health system to make it stronger? Have we come out of isolation unified by our collective sacrifice? Not so much.

Some of us learned to make sourdough bread, so I guess there is that. But silver linings have appeared rare.

One of the few bright spots of this dark time — here in Toronto and elsewhere — has been how the requirements to stay outdoors and keep our distance from each other showed us some ways to reimagine our use of public spaces. Roads closed for hiking and biking, streets turned into patios and impromptu parks added a spark of joy to familiar places. Along the way, many of us wondered why we hadn’t just done all that before. And hoped we’d continue doing it after the fever broke. A new normal, better than the old one.

In some cities, like (famously) Paris, the local government embraced the transformation, giving a permanent makeover to former arteries and even highway spaces to make them vibrant, bustling public squares. Carlos Moreno, an academic and consultant to the Paris mayor, has said that the pandemic served as “an awakening” for people to see new possibilities.

One starts to fear that here in Toronto the awakening to possibility is giving way to a snoozing back into grinding habit. It happened already with the “ActiveTO” weekend road closures that saw people out roaming the roads across the city and on the waterfront — legitimately enjoying places that are more often the site of traffic-induced road rage. Last summer, as my colleague Shawn Micallef loudly complained at the time, that initiative was killed off. Toronto can only allow so much fun before it has to get back to the business of (barely) moving cars.

CaféTO — the initiative that saw sidewalks and the curb lanes of roads on major streets transformed into patio spaces for restaurants and bars — seemed by all accounts to have a sunnier potential future. Local businesses loved participating and everyone found it profitable: the city estimates the program “contributed $203 million in economic benefits to Toronto in 2022.” A great many residents, encountering a three-seasons street party in their neighbourhood, were eager to get used to it.

Indeed, next week the mayor’s executive committee is hearing a report from city bureaucrats on how to make the whole thing permanent. The question is if, in trying to do that, the city government will be capable of not strangling the project in the cradle.

The potential problem is that the city, reasonably enough, wants standards that make these patios accessible, safe and esthetically pleasing, which means for the first time it’s going to require participating businesses to construct standardized platforms for curb lane patios. On top of that, again reasonably enough, the city thinks that if private businesses are using public property to generate revenue, they should pay some rent in the form of fees. During the pandemic emergency trial period of the program, the city waived all potential fees and even kicked in infrastructure costs. The plan is to change that.

None of that logic by the city is wrong, per se. But the upshot is that plenty of small businesses that participated in the past could be facing a significant cost to continue.

Specifically: the average cost of building a platform to the city’s specifications is estimated at $14,000 (of which, in 2023, half could be reimbursed by a matching-funds federal program); the city is asking for a one-time application fee of $865, and then by-the-square-metre annual fees totalling an average of $1,500 per year for sidewalk patios and $3,077 per year for curbside ones.

So a business that ran a curbside patio the past couple of years might be facing upfront costs of almost $11,000 to participate this year, and then more than $3,000 per year after that, plus off-season storage costs for their infrastructure. The barriers to new entrants curbside get even higher after the federal grant program expires at the end of 2023.

Nothing about those fees seems unreasonable in principle. But in practice, the question is whether small businesses feeling strapped by inflation costs and staffing shortages will pony up. The thing is, if businesses drop out of the program because of the costs, it’s not just their loss — the people of Toronto will see the great transformation of their neighbourhoods reversed.

The total cost of the program, according to the city, is estimated to be about $4.3 million, of which they anticipate getting back about 68 per cent (or just over $2.9 million) in fees. $2.9 million is a lot of money to most of us, and the city is a bit cash strapped itself right now. But it does seem to me that in the context of the city’s $15-billion budget, and given the cost of any kind of public realm improvement (a recent revamp of one midtown park, for instance, took four years and cost almost $5 million), we’re talking about a relatively small amount of money compared to the impact it has across the city’s life and economy.

In principle, private businesses participating should pay their fair share. In practice, the value to the city of seeing this initiative continue to thrive is such that a longer runway for phasing in fees might be worthwhile.

Virtually everyone agrees CaféTO is a success worth building on. As we approach making it permanent, let’s just try to ensure it stays viable enough to last through the year. Even if motivated by love, a warm bureaucratic embrace offered in the form of regulations and fees can be smothering.

Edward Keenan is a Toronto-based city columnist for the Star. Reach him via email: ekeenan@thestar.ca