Downtown businesses have been anxious about the long winter ahead: Starting January 2, the City of Charlottesville will commence rebricking the entire Downtown Mall, a construction project sure to deter many would-be shoppers.
But restaurants with café space got cause to grow even more concerned when they received a letter October 30 from Charlottesville’s zoning administrator, Read Brodhead, informing them that no cafés would be permitted on the Mall until the rebricking is complete. That means even if the rebricking is complete in front of a restaurant, it won’t be able to put out café space until the entire project is done.
The city says that the project will take four months, pushing back the café season until the beginning of May. Typically, café season begins in March.
Michael Rodi, owner of Rapture, is worried what impact that will have on his business. When the weather starts to warm, he projects that patrons will go where there are outdoor options, and eschew the Mall altogether. Together with a winter that promises to be slower than usual, he thinks it might be enough to push many Downtown restaurants out of business.
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No cafés til May? No way! Rapture owner Michael Rodi is critical of city policy during the Mall rebricking. |
Rodi immediately responded to Brodhead with a letter asking the city to reconsider the policy or abandon the rebricking project altogether “rather than spending a tremendous sum of taxpayers’ money in order to make the mall a sad, depressing monument to economic failure.” He asks that the city at least allow cafés to operate when not impeded by construction.
Brodhead says that, in order to finish on time, the work crews will need unencumbered access to the Mall. “As you know, this is going to be a very extensive project and there is going to be a lot of work to get done in such a small window of time,” explains Brodhead by e-mail. “The construction crews need to be able to work without any obstructions slowing down the process. Moving cafés on and off the mall on a daily basis just isn’t a practical option.”
“We’re all on the same page in the need to get this done and get it done in a timely way,” says Bob Stroh, co-chairman of the Downtown Business Association. “The city has accepted every reasonable recommendation we’ve made. I don’t think there’s any question that everyone understands what’s at stake both in getting the job done and getting it done in a timely way.”
But Rodi wonders whether four months is a reasonable time frame for the project. “You will forgive me if I take your projections with a grain of salt,” Rodi wrote in his letter. “The 3rd St NE rebricking was completed more than four months after the allotted timeframe.”
To be fair to the city, the Third Street project was complicated by utility work and putting down a concrete slab on which the bricks rest, and the slab is already in place for the main Mall rebricking. Still, the slab will have to be broken in certain places for utilities, and almost certainly some unknowns will surface as the bricks are torn up.
The city is holding a meeting with Downtown restaurants on November 14 to discuss the change.
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