Public Space: Comet & Marvelous Market -- Another View

Public Space: Comet & Marvelous Market
Originally uploaded by ANC 3F-04

(Image from the ANC3F Flickr pool.)

Sue writes:

The way this whole issue arose originally is Comet came in asking for ANC support for a sidewalk cafe permit. The ANC said we'll support you, but it'd look better if you weren't already in ongoing violation of the permit law with respect to the ping-pong table you've put out on the sidewalk. Comet agreed to move the ping-pong table inside. (Note that Comet's plans for the sidewalk cafe probably doom the ping-pong table's continued existence in that location anyway.)

Then the usual ANC bashers started to pile on. And suddenly, Marvelous Market's tables and P&P's bench are forced back inside.

Is that Winstead's doing or is it DDOT's? DDOT is eager to prove that ANCs are killing street life because DDOT constantly encounters ANC resistance when it does things like overrule its own traffic engineers and tells Commerce Bank it can go ahead and route an estimated 1200 (Commerce's estimate) cars a day through a public alley in order to build a drive-thru branch on upper Wisconsin.

Perhaps DDOT thought that a little overzealous enforcement of the permitting law, identifying Winstead as the source of such enforcement would help discredit the ANCs oversight of their agency.

DDOT's Ward 3 community liaison (who is not an official agency spokesperson and who doesn't handle public space permits but is a central player in the not-yet-resolved controversy over Commerce Bank) was eager to use the Marvelous Market example to make a much broader claim in the Post about how ANCs and "activists" with stifling street life in upper NW.

It would have cost Politics and Prose a grand total of $19 to get a permit for its bench that would last for the life of the structure. But they didn't and neither did Marvelous Market (which might have to go through a more burdensome/expensive permitting process if its tables/chairs are considered a sidewalk cafe rather than street furniture).

If a simple permit of the kind P&P needs to put its bench back out is a bureaucratic nightmare to get, is that Winstead's fault or DDOT's? I agree with P&P that DC government creates a really hostile environment for small business (high tax rates, dysfunctional/arbitrary/unnecessarily burdensome regulatory apparatus, inadequate provision of public services) -- but the ANCs aren't the problem.

Let me add that I patronize all of these businesses and I support each of their current/proposed uses of public space. But I also see the merits of having (and enforcing) a permit process rather than allowing merchants to unilaterally appropriate public space for whatever purposes they choose.

This isn't about street life or suburban mentalities. It's about rule of law and the privatization of public space. The right answer here is for each business to apply for the requisite permits, for the ANC to support these applications, and for the permits to be speedily issued.
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I have to admit I was suckered in, because too often ANC Commissioners act like self-important dictators and engage in what I call the tyranny of neighborhood parochialism. My own biases may have come to play here... I may even owe Frank Winstead an apology.