St. Joseph City Commissioners have approved a one-year extension of a program allowing businesses near the Pleasant Street Plaza to use public space for gatherings.
City Communications Director Kayla Griffith tells us the five-year program was created in 2020, during COVID, to help those businesses offer outdoor seating. It’s now expired and the city commission needed to approve a new agreement, but they had something else to consider.
“According to the Michigan Constitution and bylaws, anyone that wishes to use public property for private gain is required to reimburse the city,” Griffith said. “The city is required to charge a fee. Right now we have a sidewalk policy for any dining on city sidewalks where it’s by chair. We don’t currently have a policy though for our streets or parking spaces.”
And the space being used in the plaza by those businesses includes parking spaces.
“Pleasant Street Plaza overall is public use, and there are just a couple of sections then that are private use. Because when restaurants are serving food and alcohol, they have to have kind of a barricaded off area, and so that’s kind of where the private-public costs in the new agreement come into place. It isn’t necessarily the entire plaza, which many businesses in that area use, but the private on and off aspects of that plaza.”
Griffith says the city commission this week approved the extension to create a sort of “bridge year” so such a policy can be drafted.
“In creating a bridge year, we would hopefully be able to set a fair, reasonable price for this year for Pleasant Street Plaza while we work on a wider view for the entire city moving forward.”
The city economic development director is now working on that pricing for the bridge year and will bring a proposal to commissioners at their next meeting.
Griffith says the Pleasant Street Plaza has been successful for the affected business owners.
“A lot of feedback from the businesses over there is that it has been a great way to build community and kind of foster community. So in addition to helping their business itself, creating a destination in downtown St. Joe where people can can gather has been, I think, important for them as well.”
The next city commission meeting is April 27.
