The issue of road closures for patio season in the downtown is not dead, says Mayor Cam Guthrie, even if council ratifies Monday’s committee of the whole decision to limit expanded patios to private property, sidewalks and on-street parking spaces.
He plans to make it an election issue in 2022 and, if returned to office, try again.
“It’s the right thing to do,” Guthrie said of closing roads, at least the intersection of Macdonell and Wyndham streets like last year. “We had such an amazing thing going last year. Not only should it have continued, it should have been expanded.”
Meeting Monday, the committee of the whole unanimously voted in support of the staff-recommended option to maintain two-way traffic lanes, with the exception of special events.
“It was the only position left after exhausting all other options,” Guthrie explained of his support for the motion. “The default position is to allow the patios to be in the parking spaces and of course I support that. The icing on the cake option would have been to also allow road closures and to have the patios expanded out onto the streets.”
Council voted 10-3 against closing the intersection from Victoria Day weekend to Thanksgiving weekend and 8-5 against weekend closures throughout the summer. Guthrie voted in favour of both of those options.
“There is an opportunity at the end of the month for a couple of councillors to change their mind and I hope that there is a willingness on councillors to reconsider how they voted last night,” he said. “My position has been clear on this, really since day one.”
The matter comes to council March 29 for final ratification.
In a staff report to council, the cost of closing the intersection of Macdonell and Wyndham streets is estimated at $338,200 for 2021, in part due to the rerouting of transit buses and the need to bring on more buses to make up for lost time and increased distances being travelled. For weekend-only closures, the cost was pegged at $152,200.
That’s in addition to the $112,500 committee members agreed to spend in 2021 to cover the purchase of barriers to be placed between patios and open traffic.
Several business operators told council on Monday that on-street patios last summer allowed them to have significantly greater capacity than wouldn't be possible under the committee-approved motion. This, they said, allowed them to keep people working.
“I am extremely disappointed and I think the community is going to be disappointed, and they are, they clearly are,” Guthrie said, noting he’s heard from a variety of sources since Monday’s meeting, including from media outside of Guelph and “very well-known urban planners” as well as residents.
“People are dismayed, they’re shaking their heads, they cannot understand why this type of a decision would be made when it was not only a good thing for the community to do but it also helped businesses,” the mayor said. “There’s this recognition of the atmosphere and what a joy it was to experience that within our city, but there’s also a recognition of complete empathy for businesses that are struggling.
“People just don’t seem to understand why there was a willingness to help businesses in the middle of a pandemic last year but not in the middle of a pandemic this year.”
Not all downtown business owners are in favour of road closures, notes the staff report – a comment echoed by some delegates on Monday – with some suggesting the closure last year made it difficult to navigate downtown.
Businesses without patios also reported hearing customer complaints about not being able to access businesses in a timely manner due to the road closures and confusion about parking availability.
Concerns about the impacts on transit, and increased traffic volumes on nearby residential roads, were also raised.
