Vancouver council to debate second year of pilot program for extended patio hours

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      Vancouver city council will consider a report this week that recommends allowing some patios to stay open later as part of the second year of a pilot program.

      Vision Vancouver councillor Heather Deal said 46 out of the 316 large-patio operators in the city applied to take part in the program last year, which was launched late in the summer.

      “They reported good results, and we’re not getting complaints, so we’re going to continue that pilot for another year, and hopefully we’ll get an expanded number of patios taking advantage of it, so that we can really test run it around the city before we make it a permanent change,” Deal told the Straight by phone.

      If staff recommendations are approved this week, the extended restaurant patio hours will be in effect from April to October this year and will allow operators to stay open until midnight, an hour later than the current curfew of 11 p.m.

      Deal said patio operators who haven’t received any complaints within the past 12 months will be eligible to apply to the pilot program. The later patio curfew would come with requirements, including no outdoor amplified music and responsibility for noise levels.

      As part of the same staff report, city council will also consider a revised Vancouver street-vending by-law this week.

      Changes recommended as part of the updated bylaw include restrictions to the city’s food-vending program. These include prohibiting the rental or sale of permits, and ensuring that stationary or roaming food vendors are located at least 100 metres from a similar brick-and-mortar business.

      “We’ve been learning from the program as it grows and changes, and this year, we’ve seen evidence that the sub-leasing was a significant issue—bigger than we realized it was,” said Deal.

      “This program was really intended for entrepreneurs, for small businesses, for start-ups,” she added.

      “And we were running into situations where one person might have a whole bunch of the permits and be sub-leasing them out at prices significantly higher than the city was charging them, and that’s not what the program was intended for.”

      The report will go before the city’s planning, transportation and environment committee this Wednesday (February 19).

      Comments

      3 Comments

      Bruce Dean

      Feb 17, 2014 at 6:19pm

      They sure do seem to be making it easier and easier for people to access and consume alcohol, the most deadly and addictive drug in the world, while marijuana arrests keep increasing, marijuana deaths keep not happening, and the rest of the world seems to be legalizing.

      That doesn't seem very sensible.

      G

      Feb 18, 2014 at 5:41pm

      Yes by all means spend more council time on issues like this in the months before the next election. No point in angering people by rubber stamping the various neighbourhood plans and the city-wide "densification" zoning changes before the election. Instead council will spend time showing how "fun" they can make the city by expanding drinking hours and peddling cycling & green stories to the media as quickly as they can be made up. The next few months the Vision controlled council is going to avoid development related issues even as their bagmen in the development community fill party & candidate coffers in anticipation of huge favours to come.

      Council has put off decisions on community plans until after the next election because they know local anger won't be easily assuaged. Residents of Grandview-Woodlands, Marpole & the West End were outraged by even the edited plans and rendering shown off by the city at public hearings and the apparent disregard for local opinion. Since Robertson was maneuvered into the Mayor's chair developers with the proper connections have seen their profits increase thanks to fiddled "community" fees and heritage bonuses that appear to have more to do with to whom the developer donates than the property itself. Regardless of articles claiming the contrary the current Mayor and majority on council have far more in common with Tom Campbell than any NPA government since that time with regards to favouring developers & making questionable deals on the taxpayers' dime.

      The genius of Vision is how they leveraged "green" & "social justice" values to create a broad coalition of supporters, a "fraternization of collectives" if you will, each so narrowly focused as to miss Vision's plans for development. Bike lanes and all things bike related became a useful distraction for Vision during the Robertson era. They even used "bike safety" as an excuse to remove Point Grey Road from the streets that would have been subject to their densification plan as first published. They Mayor and key Vision supporters love in the area and didn't spend millions to have a 3.5 storey townhouse or condo built next door! How brilliant was it to have cycling activists from "the drive" supporting de facto privatization of a road full of 1%ers? Pure genius which one must admire.

      cathy

      Feb 19, 2014 at 9:34am

      It's all about money.

      The later patio's stay open-more people are drinking & more money is made.
      More people drinking means more drunks on the road and more alcohol problems to deal with.
      So as a society we pay for the damage from alcohol and the bar owners make the big bucks.

      Makes sense.