(DANVILLE, Calif.) - Mayor Newell Arnerich drew a hard line on Danville's main street Tuesday morning: no parklets on Hartz Avenue, permanently, written into the ordinance.
"We can't have, in the future going forward any parklets on Hartz Avenue," Arnerich said during the Town Council's 8 a.m. study session on outdoor restaurant seating. "That is the vehicle that we use for parades, all of the shows, all the events to get people downtown to support businesses. And we ought to be upfront about that."
There are none on Hartz now, which is precisely why he wanted it settled. "Otherwise, we're going to have somebody close, somebody opens, we're going to have somebody come back."
Staff backed the exclusion on engineering grounds. Hartz carries the town's heaviest vehicle traffic plus significant bicycle traffic, and a squeezed parklet forces bikes and cars into tight interaction. It also absorbs heavy demand for on-street parking because of visitor turnover.
Council members then extended the carve-out to both East and West Prospect Avenue, noting those streets serve as downtown's other spines and that East Prospect is substandard in width by engineering measure.
The session was the council's second pass at replacing the emergency rules that let restaurants spread onto sidewalks and into parking stalls starting in 2020. Members signaled in June they would keep parklets on a permanent footing while ending the broader expanded outdoor dining program. Tuesday's agenda listed a single item — an outdoor restaurant seating update — and adjourned with no vote taken.
(Photo Credit: Facebook/ Traffic advisory)
The candor was notable for a study session.
"I'd be honest, I want them all to go away. This is a hangover," one council member said, arguing that subjective aesthetic standards had produced a downtown of mismatched structures. "We have visions of what we think they're going to look like, and they don't, and they never, ever will." The comparison offered was Calistoga, where standardizing every parklet to an identical design created a sense of organization.
Only two parklets draw consistent crowds, by that member's count: Danville Brewing, which was full the previous night, and one other operator. Rancho Cantina opens downtown this week.
Fees are staying low. "Nobody would be as cheap as we are," a member said of the proposed rate schedule, describing it as a minor leveling of the playing field.
Councilmember Karen Stepper pressed on a scenario staff had not addressed: what happens when a business gives up a parklet space, and another wants it. She asked whether allocations would be capped against interior square footage to prevent one operator from accumulating spaces off a waitlist, naming Pete's Brass Rail as a hypothetical. She said she was not asking for more parklets, only for a way to respond as businesses change hands.
Staff confirmed existing design guidelines already bar a parklet from extending past a business's frontage property line, protecting neighboring retail storefronts, and that a parklet cannot exceed a 100% match of interior seating area. Pre-pandemic rules capped free outdoor seating at 25%.
Staff also described a recommended provision blocking on-street parklets for businesses that can accommodate up to 50% of their seating onsite.
The town is pausing new parklets, grandfathering existing ones, until a parking analysis is finished. The draft ordinance goes to the Planning Commission before returning to the council.
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