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As soon as this month, city officials said they plan to reopen West Pearl Street to cars, a move that would bring the pedestrian-friendly transformation ushered in by the Covid-19 pandemic to at least a temporary end.
Pearl Street was closed to traffic between 9th and 11th Streets since May 2020, so restaurants could serve food and alcohol outside when coronavirus precautions limited indoor dining capacity. At the end of August 2022, City Manager Nuria Rivera-Vandermyde lifted the emergency measure that allowed restaurants to use public sidewalks and streets. Nearly all businesses have since cleared out their tables and tents along West Pearl. Only concrete barriers block cars from passing through.
“The reasons to keep it closed no longer exist,” Cris Jones, the interim director for the Community Vitality Department, told Boulder Reporting Lab.
Jones said city staff will issue a recommendation for opening the street to cars to the Transportation Advisory Board on Sept. 12, and Boulder City Council on Sept. 15. But he said the decision to lift the street closure does not require council approval. Under the Boulder Revised Code, the city manager has broad authority to make decisions regarding street closures.
“There is no definitive date or exact time and day that the street will reopen,” Jones said. “It’s an emphatic staff recommendation. We certainly have every authority empowered by city council policy to do it without getting [council’s] opinion, but we certainly want to involve them in the process and conversation.”
Many viewed the transformed West Pearl as a possible extension of the popular Pearl Street Mall. Despite its popularity with many residents and tourists, several businesses advocated for allowing cars back on the street. They include the Big Red F Restaurant Group, which owns the West End Tavern and Jax Fish House & Oyster Bar. The restaurant group and others have said their businesses fare better with car traffic and accessible parking.
The city’s restaurants were among the hardest-hit businesses during the pandemic. Many have yet to fully rebound to pre-pandemic sales, according to city sales tax revenue reports. Citing the ongoing economic uncertainty, the Downtown Boulder Partnership, a nonprofit organization that represents businesses on the Pearl Street Mall, issued a policy position in support of the two blocks reopening to cars.
“I think a lot of people don’t understand the impact that it’s had on the restaurants,” Chip, the CEO of Downtown Boulder Partnership, said in an interview. “Our restaurants struggle already and we don’t want to put up more barriers.”
The city’s plan is likely to spark pushback from residents. In recent weeks, Boulder City Councilmembers’ inboxes have been flooded with emails urging them to keep the street closed on grounds it’s better for the environment, ambience and pedestrian safety.
The city council is slated to discuss the future of West Pearl during its Sept. 15 city council meeting when city staff will present their recommendations. Several councilmembers are still advocating for keeping cars off the street.
“I think there is still a conversation to be had about whether cars are returning,” Mayor Aaron Brockett said in an interview. “I would love for there to be a car-free future for West Pearl.”
The city still plans to allow outdoor dining on West Pearl under its new outdoor dining pilot program, which requires businesses to lease the public right-of-way from the city and build or purchase infrastructure that meets certain standards. But few restaurants have applied for the permits to serve food outdoors on West Pearl, according to the city, indicating a lack of interest in maintaining outdoor dining under the city’s new pilot.
The restaurants that have applied include Salt, ND streetBAR, The Kitchen, Jungle and Ash’Kara.
Without more restaurants participating in the outdoor dining pilot, the closed-off road would lack the vibrancy that it had during the pandemic, Jones, the Community Vitality Department interim director, said.
He said the effects on businesses were only one reason to allow cars back on the street. The closure could produce more traffic — and greenhouse gas emissions — while drivers search for fewer parking spots, he said. It’s also difficult to plow in the winter and less accessible to people who are unable to walk or bike downtown, according to Jones.
Coming up with a plan to address these issues will take time and money his department does not have, he said. And he doesn’t want to keep businesses waiting in the meantime.
“This has not been part of our work plan,” Jones said. “We have not identified resources to mitigate those challenges in a fashion and in a timeline that makes sense to keep these businesses thriving.”
He hopes to get feedback from the Boulder City Council next week on whether to begin studying the possibility of a more permanent or consistent street closure, including a seasonal or weekend closure, to begin in 2023.
Every consequential decision regarding the mall, he said, started that way — with a deliberate process and funding. He said the planning for the Pearl Street Mall, for instance, took about 10 years of planning before it was built in 1977.
“It did not start with a street closure,” he said. “It started with a plan and process with some money behind it. And that is what we would suggest any major decision in this community should start with.”
This is a pretty workable set of challenges, honestly. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Seems like Cris (a dear human) and others just don’t have the will, are overwhelmed, and that’s real and its own set of challenges.
We have a downtown mall, and we know how to take care of it when it snows. Folks know where to park. We could create a token system (go to West End, get a paper or digital token on the receipt, free parking spot next time you come down, incentivizes return business and folks learning about the six parking garages and two lots https://bouldercolorado.gov/services/city-parking-garages#:~:text=There%20are%206%20downtown%20garages,employees%20of%20CAGID%20(Downtown) .
We’re a bold town. This is like folks who love our Boulder Public Library saying, well, the library is great, but it’s complicated, and costly, and it takes a lot of work, so let’s let it atrophy. Let’s push back on that.
Now more than ever, we need to make Boulder better, cooler, more community-based, instead of fighting for 63 parking spots. Add a few benches, plant a few trees, host some public programming, we can add lovely big boulders and a jungle gym later.
As someone who uses a walker, the outdoor dining and closure of parking (especially handicapped parking) on west Pearl has deterred me from going to my favorite haunts—the Trident, Shoe Fly, Helping Hands medical, Canova, Boulder Bookstore, and others. I’m so looking forward to being able to park nearby and get back independently.
I recently got a friend to drop me off, go park, then join me there—what a hassle, and repeated on the return home—and I noticed how much restaurants’ outdoor dining areas obscured the shop storefronts. Instead of looking across the street and seeing charming signs and windows of businesses, a thicket of seating on both sides blocks them visually—and for me made access quite tough to navigate. It doesn’t seem fair for restaurants to benefit at the expense of non-food businesses—nor to further limit parking for all the disabled and older folks who need to park close to businesses to shop.
I hope the Council nixes the idea of permanent outdoor dining areas, or I fear the area will become one huge dining court.
The Council has been trying to force folks to bus or bike downtown for decades. In the face of failure they just double down. Bus ridership is abysmal. We humans are hard-wired to save time, money and calories; Jeff Bezos wouldn’t be a billionaire otherwise. Boulder’s population is aging, and no matter how much folks pursue “healthy” lifestyles and supplements many will be shocked to find they still face physical limitations. Let’s get real and find more effective ways to protect the environment that don’t bar elders and disabled folks from our civic and social spaces.
In Ireland they have parking spaces not just for the disabled, but also for elders. Great idea!
Road blocks? You want the already hard hit restaurants to pay more to use sidewalks in front for dining. No wonder few have applied. The counsel puts up road blocks for parking already (costs for any nearby parking are deterrents that keep many of us from choosing Pearl Street as a shopping spot). The logic here is reversed. Having more spots again may well encourage more to opt to drive to where more parking is again available rather than use alternative transportation. Keeping West Pearl closed to cars is friendlier to bikes and pedestrians. Not the other way around. The snow plow concern is a legit one… but how is it handled on the rest of the mall? And why couldn’t sidewalk use by restaurants require that they keep their areas free of snow? I also suspect the non-restaurant owners will see an uptick in business when people are walking (discoverability) and that won’t be measurable for a while since we are just now coming out of a pandemic, thus people are just now beginning to create new shopping habits. My family certainly has used West Pearl businesses more with it being a walking mall. Some we didn’t even spot until we slowly walked on the mall. All conversations with my friends about it have indicated that it is well loved as is the eastern end. And since the mall is the main attraction for visitors to our city, why not make it longer so more businesses are easily found.