The Municipal Services Committee met 01/24/2022 and took up a request to approve a City of Appleton On-Street Parklet Policy.
Jennifer Stephany the Executive Director of Appleton Downtown Inc spoke to the committee. She said that ADI piloted a parklet for a couple months in 2021. They used a prefabricated unit. She was excited to see this policy come forward but there were a couple things she hoped the committee and Council discussed.
Her first concern was that while this policy worked for organizations like ADI, the Chamber of Commerce, and possibly the Appleton Northside Business Association, it didn’t work for private businesses. She wondered if this opportunity would be made available to private businesses if not this coming year, then sometime in the future.
Public Works Director Paula Vandehey answered that a team consisting of the Attorney’s Office, Police, Fire, Traffic, Risk Management, and the Community and Economic Development Department had worked on this policy. They had discussed opening this up to private businesses instead of only allowing non-profit organizations to sponsor them. They decided to recommend only allowing non-profits to sponsor them because of two concerns.
The first was that if a restaurant, for example, sponsored one that the general public would not feel like they could use it, whereas one sponsored by a non-profit will feel more open to the public.
The second concern was that, having conducted the pilot with ADI, they knew what that parklet was built with and that they could rely on ADI to have the right insurance and the right safety measures in place. They weren’t sure how things would go if they opened things up to different businesses that thought they would be able to fabricate their own parklets.
They thought this policy was a good next set after the pilot. In time they could possibly look at loosening up the rules, but she would rather start a little tighter and have it be successful.
Jennifer touched on the cost and asked if there was any consideration given to creating a flat rate. They know that parking meters typically aren’t typically utilized 100% throughout the day or week. She wondered if it would be possible to have a seasonal rate for a parklet utilizing those parking spaces.
Director Vandehey said that the Council-approved fee for any meter that is bagged or used by something that’s not parking is $9 per day plus tax. The idea is that although it might not be used every hour of the day, the parking utility is losing the potential for that meter to be plugged all day long. If the committee wanted implement a different cost for parklets, it would be a variance to the existing fee policy.
Jennifer also wanted to confirm that parklet sponsors would not be locked into using the same company that they had used for the parklet they had piloted this last summer.
Director Vandehey confirmed they would not. The parklet construction just had to meet the criteria laid out in the policy.
Jennifer noted that the parklet they had utilized had been very difficult to put together, and they would like to look at other suppliers. She said that there were several companies that create prefabricated parklet units and she thought there might be some local businesses that could create something. She didn’t want to be locked in to any one provider and wanted to ability to shop around.
Alderperson Sheri Hartzheim (District 13) who attended the meeting but was not a member of the committee, said she didn’t expect there to be an issue of too many parklets in Appleton, but she wondered if there had been any discussion about limiting the number of parklets that could be installed in the city.
Director Vandehey answered that they had not discussed that. She wasn’t sure that was going to be a concern given some of the guidelines regarding acceptable placement. She also noted that this was the first year of the policy so they didn’t want to shoot themselves in the foot. She said that if Council did want to add a maximum not, they could review it every couple of years.
Alderperson Hartzheim said her only concern was that if it eventually became a really popular thing to do then they would lose downtown parking which is extremely important to businesses as well.
Alderperson Firkus (District 3) who is the chair of the Municipal Services Committee, thought that because they had limited the groups that could sponsor parklets the number of units wouldn’t be an issue, but if they were to open up sponsorship opportunities to more entities then they would want to consider setting a limit.
Alderperson Alex Schultz (District 9) who was in attendance but not a committee member said he participated in the installation of ADIs parklet last year and it was a complicated unit. He sensed that if other businesses had an interest in pursuing a parklet they may not go down the route of trying to purchase a prefabricated one but instead have someone local build one. He didn’t see anything in the policy that would prevent them from doing that, so long as the units met the criteria laid out in the policy.
He agreed that they should take things slowly and see how they worked out. He did share concern about limiting them to only non-profits. He knew a couple local businesses who would be interested in applying, McFleschman’s Brewing being one although he didn’t know if they had the funds to purchase a prefabricated unit.
He was also concerned about the meter cost. Two meters at $9 a day each for the duration of the summer could be a pretty significant cost.
He also mentioned Acoca Coffee as a place that might want to sponsor a parklet. They had some space behind their building which was not a metered parking zone but was instead 1 hour limited parking. He wondered if there were opportunities in other spaces off of College Avenue to help businesses that might have spaces like that which could accommodate parklets.
He thought the space was ideal but since it wasn’t metered parking right now how the city would recover costs or define the space that could be taken up by a parklet.
Overall, he liked where things were going and thought it made sense to go slow, but eventually he thought it would be nice to allow businesses to sponsor parklets once the city understood how they worked and how they could be constructed.
Director Vandehey clarified that parklets were not allowed on College Avenue. They have to be on two lane roads with speed limits of 25 miles per hour or slower. She said the streets didn’t have to have metered parking; there just needed to be a parking lane so that there was space to put a parklet outside of the travel lane.
Alderperson Schultz asked if she had a sense of the cost for a year for two bagged spaced.
Director Vandehey said it was $9 a day, 6 days a week. [Parking on Sunday’s is free.] So the cost would be $54 multiplied by however many weeks they wanted it. She thought ADI paid around $1,200. [I guess it depends on how long entities wanted them out there. At $54 a week, 12 weeks from the beginning of June to the end of August would only cost $648 but if they wanted to have it for the full May 1 through October 31 timeframe allowed by the policy, that would be in the $1,300 range.]
Alderperson Schultz said that was a substantial cost and he didn’t know what the cost benefit would be for a business to pay for the construction of a parklet and then have the parking fees on top of that. He hoped that would iron itself out over time and perhaps they could come up with another metric for recovering the lost revenue from those parking spaces.
Alderperson Chad Doran (District 15) who served on the committee noted that the policy said that the sponsoring organization needed the approval of the businesses directly adjacent to where the parklet would be placed. He wanted to clarify if that was just for the businesses on the side of the street the parklet was placed or if it included the businesses on the opposite side of the street.
Director Vandehey confirmed it was only for those on the same side of the street as the parklet, not those across the street.
In response to another question from him she confirmed that if the sponsors didn’t get approval from a business they could potentially just move further down the street.
Alderperson Doran also asked if for some reason a permit would be denied was there a process for appeal, such as to the committee. He didn’t see that detailed in the policy.
Director Vandehey said that per the policy “requests not meeting the criteria shall be denied administratively”. Typically, the appeal process for administrative denials is through the committee and then the Council.
Alderperson Doran also clarified with Director Vandehey that the sidewalk cafés listed in bullet point 10 under “Approval Criteria” (“On-street parklets shall not be allowed immediately adjacent to a sidewalk café.”) referred to businesses that had tables and chairs out on the sidewalk in front of their building and that parklets would not be allowed to be placed there.
Alderperson Joe Martin (District 4) who was present but not a member of the committee asked if parklets would be allowed on Washington, Franklin, or Lawrence Streets.
Director Vandehey said that Washing had parking so parklets would be allowed on them. Franklin does not have parking so they would not be allowed. Lawrence Street has parking so they could go there.
Alderperson Joe Prohaska (District 14) who serves on the committee harkened back to Alderperson Doran’s question about sidewalk cafés and asked if there was a parklet in place and a business wanted to start a sidewalk café would the city deny that request.
Director Vandehey confirmed that they would not be able to have a sidewalk café if a parklet was in place. She noted that was why the policy required the approval of adjacent businesses.
Alderperson Firkus thought they had put together a nice policy. He appreciated the suggestions, but thought it would be got to put this policy in place for a minimum of 1 year so they could learn a little bit before looking at opening it up.
He thought parklets had a lot of potential, and he noted that some of the things he had read indicated that parklets actually generate more activity than parking spots. So, even though the parking utility might take a hit, the added commerce and vitality they brought to the downtown area could result in a net positive effect with property values going up. They would then pay for themselves on the back end through higher property taxes.
The committee members had no further comments or questions and they voted 5-0 to approve the policy.
View full meeting details here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=922394&GUID=E81A6D7F-2946-47B6-9BE7-69850ED8D892
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