Johnny Farina patio to make way for wheelchairs
Elgin patios to continue, but accessibility problems remain
By Emma Jackson
Ottawa West News, Apr 21, 2015
Johnny Farina’s 26-person patio will get a little cozier this summer after the city asked the popular restaurant to leave a wider sidewalk for pedestrians.
The Italian restaurant at 216 Elgin St. will have to chop 0.2 metres, about eight inches, off its outdoor space so that pedestrians have a full two metres of unencumbered sidewalk to get by.
Right now the patio allows 1.8 metres of sidewalk, which meets the city’s accessibility design standards. But because of the high pedestrian traffic in the area and a busy bus stop right out front, it’s hard to get through.
That’s especially true if you’ve got a wheelchair or similar mobility aid – something resident Linda Paul knows all too well.
Paul uses a mobility scooter to get around, and she said patios last summer made it incredibly difficult for her to move down Elgin Street to access her doctor’s office and other local spots.
Not only were some of the patios bigger than allowed, she said the sidewalk that was left for her was often cracked and broken, or littered with obstacles like hydro poles, sandwich board signs and fire hydrants.
“When you’re travelling down the sidewalk you’re zigging around a patio then zagging around a post or a hydrant and then you have to keep wandering around the sidewalk which adds to the congestion,” Paul said. “We don’t expect cars to do that, we don’t expect bikes to do that. Why do we expect pedestrians and people on mobility scooters or wheelchairs to have to zig-zag down the sidewalk around all of these obstacles?”
City staff committed to making sidewalk repairs a priority on Elgin this spring. As for fire hydrants and hydro poles, moving those will have to wait until the street is redeveloped in 2018.
While the sidewalk will get a little wider at Johnny Farina, south of MacLaren Street patios will still be allowed to maintain the 1.8 metres.
That’s because the intersection at Elgin and Lisgar Street near Johnny Farina sees about 10,000 pedestrian movements over eight hours compared to only about 3,000 south of MacLaren over the same period.
Johnny Farina owner Dino Iafelice said it will cost him about $6,000 to modify his patio. Waitresses will also have a tighter squeeze moving between tables, he said, but he doesn’t expect the modifications to mean fewer seats for customers.
His is the only restaurant that has to make changes this year, but Iafelice said he’s able to swallow that pill as long as other, smaller patios don’t have to in the future.
“I just hope we haven’t opened up a can of worms for the other businesses. Because if they have a two metre clearance, they’re dead,” he said.
Woody’s Pub owner Keith Loiselle told the transportation committee just that. His restaurant is located south of MacLaren, so he doesn’t have to shorten his patio this year, but if that’s on the table in the future he said his patio would absolutely have to close – and he knows other businesses are in the same boat.
And if the Elgin patios were to close, there’s no way the street would be able to compete with areas like the Byward Market, Glebe and Preston Street, he said.
“The vitality of Elgin is important, and if we don’t alter ourselves to we’ll see it become something else, which is non-existent,” Loiselle said. “We had our busiest year last year, but we’re nowhere near seeing the numbers we need to have consistent traffic.”
Thomas McVeigh from the Centretown Citizens Community Association said nearby residents by no means want to see the patios disappear, but the structures have to be supportive of pedestrian traffic.
“It’s crucial for us to have that as an accessible pathway for people,” he said, noting Elgin is home to the community’s schools and recreation centre. “If we can come up with a solution that keeps our streets lively, we support the general idea of having those patios.
“What we aren’t supportive of is having patios that encroach on sidewalks so it’s not walkable for people with strollers, it’s difficult for people with wheelchairs, it’s difficult for mothers holding two or three kids.”
He said he wants the city find some way of widening the sidewalks. He supported an idea from Somerset Coun. Catherine McKenney to try a boardwalk set up that would use road space to host patios rather than the sidewalk.
PATIO PILOT
The city originally approved a two-year pilot project to add four patios and expand three others on Elgin in 2013.
The project called for regular monitoring, and during this process staff noticed pedestrians would often step off the curb onto the road when the sidewalk was too busy to get by.
The city also reached out to residents and customers for feedback. While a lot of it was surprisingly positive, city planner Derrick Moodie said about 50 per cent of the complaints they did receive dealt with accessibility issues in front of the Johnny Farina location.
Moodie said he believes the two-metre clearance at that spot will solve most of the community’s concerns.
http://www.ottawacommunitynews.com/news-...arina-patio-to-make-way-for-wheelchairs/
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