Restaurants and bars like those on 104 Street in Edmonton\u2019s downtown might have to pay to open their patios this summer, and it has one business owner questioning if he can pay the price for a patio license.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe we take a break this year and rethink it for the next year,\u201d said Flavius Joita, the owner of Birdog.<\/p>\n
Joita runs Birdog on 104 Street in the centre of Edmonton\u2019s downtown, and with the potential of paying the City of Edmonton for a patio license, he says it\u2019s another in a long line of costs that are increasing for his business.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t believe you can tax to get the vibrancy down here on 104th. With the prices of food going through the roof \u2014 I don\u2019t know if this is the year to add thousands of dollars in patio taxes,\u201d Joita explained.<\/p>\n
The new patio fees were announced earlier this year. At the time, Edmonton\u2019s mayor told CityNews the patio fees were needed to offset property tax increases.<\/p>\n
Owners could be paying nearly $7,000 for a year-long patio and $3,700 for a seasonal one on City sidewalks.<\/p>\n
Councillor Karen Principe\u2019s motion called on City leaders to rethink fees, but council shot down that motion on Wednesday, voting to keep the fees in place.<\/p>\n
Principe told CityNews the city\u2019s small business owners can\u2019t afford the increase in costs.<\/p>\n
\u201cI understand why administration brought this forward, but maybe we just didn\u2019t realize the impact it would have on these businesses. and I think it warrants further discussion,\u201d said Principe.<\/p>\n
Others on council are wondering if the new fees will make much of a difference to the city\u2019s budget.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat exactly these costs are offsetting? Because these businesses that are building these patios, it\u2019s all their costs to incur, how they want to build that out,\u201d said Reed Clarke, councillor for Ward Nakota Isga.<\/p>\n
Joita said that with nearby Valley Line West LRT construction closing down 102 Avenue, the patio fees are another hit to his business ahead of the summer season.<\/p>\n
\u201cBefore COVID, we used to get 10,000 people on 104 Street. It was one of the most important markets in North America. So now with that happening, with the street being blocked, with the patio going up, we\u2019re going to have some challenges with that,\u201d said Joita.<\/p>\n
Adding that these pricey patio fees will put a lid on downtown\u2019s vibrancy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Restaurants and bars like those on 104 Street in Edmonton\u2019s downtown might have to pay to open their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":546399,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194294],"tags":[49,48,23752],"class_list":{"0":"post-546398","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edmonton","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-edmonton"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=546398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546398\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/546399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}