> Does the public give away free real estate to the restaurant, to be used to generate revenue by the square foot?
I mean, basically yes. We just call them parking spaces. We decided most of the street should be a carve-out to vehicles and the people who can afford to drive and park them. Whenever a Rapid Transit bus lane is being proposed, shopkeepers oppose it because it "removes parking spaces", aka "the free real estate that the shop uses to generate revenue".
So that public subsidy exists, we're just debating whether we want to allocate it towards drivers or pedestrians.
Ok ok but what about parking meter revenue...
> If the restaurant wants outdoor dining, they can build it on their own property.
This I this we're on the same page, we're just haggling over price. Lets say a parking meter charges $2/hour (peak event meters in SF can go as high as $4, others can be less than $1, tweak your own napkin math). Let's assume full occupancy (x 8hr) for the full year (x 356) and we get $6,000 with these optimistic utilization-equivalency numbers. I'm not an expert on commercial real estate, but $6,000/yr or $500/mo doesn't feel unreasonable as an upper bound for an annual lease on a parking spot.
The road upkeep and maintenance almost certainly costs more, but we already agree this is a public subsidy, we're just trying to figure out who gets it.
I think you're treating these spaces as if the user is the business or the council parking meter, but in reality it's the person from the community. We've decided that the user of the space is the community, whether it's for parking, alfresco dining, or even just a little garden with a bench. As a member of the community sometimes I want to enjoy a coffee from Business A outside. Business A provides the tables and chairs, but ultimately I'm outside where I wanted to be, as the end user of the space.
I know we are interested in the economics of it right now, but I think we often get caught up in the money involved in what are ultimately community space management decisions. Surely someone should pay or be compensated for all this right? It doesn't have to be that way. Sometimes as a community we decide to put a little garden in a little spot, and that shouldn't need an arcane ritual of currency and bureaucracy.
> The road upkeep and maintenance almost certainly costs more, but we already agree this is a public subsidy, we're just trying to figure out who gets it.
B/c of the large amount of corruption that progressive cities tend to support.
I mean, basically yes. We just call them parking spaces. We decided most of the street should be a carve-out to vehicles and the people who can afford to drive and park them. Whenever a Rapid Transit bus lane is being proposed, shopkeepers oppose it because it "removes parking spaces", aka "the free real estate that the shop uses to generate revenue".
So that public subsidy exists, we're just debating whether we want to allocate it towards drivers or pedestrians.
Ok ok but what about parking meter revenue...
> If the restaurant wants outdoor dining, they can build it on their own property.
This I this we're on the same page, we're just haggling over price. Lets say a parking meter charges $2/hour (peak event meters in SF can go as high as $4, others can be less than $1, tweak your own napkin math). Let's assume full occupancy (x 8hr) for the full year (x 356) and we get $6,000 with these optimistic utilization-equivalency numbers. I'm not an expert on commercial real estate, but $6,000/yr or $500/mo doesn't feel unreasonable as an upper bound for an annual lease on a parking spot.
The road upkeep and maintenance almost certainly costs more, but we already agree this is a public subsidy, we're just trying to figure out who gets it.