Charlottesville City Hall: Here Are Two New Strategies To Save Restaurants In CVille Including An Outdoor Biergarten On The Downtown Mall

Charlottesville City Hall and our Charlottesville City Councilors may need to utilize their influence and creative thinking immediately to rescue the 2020 future of The Downtown Mall and restaurants across the City.

Here are two options to consider to help jumpstart the CVille economy while saving restaurants, a critically important employment sector in our Central Virginia community:

1. Open/pivot restaurant parking lots to “al fresco” dining options on The Mall and across the City of Charlottesville. Put guidelines in place for doing this pivot, but encourage the restaurateurs to “think outside the box” with their parking lots, nevertheless.

The local governments in Tampa, Florida & Norfolk, Virginia are already converting parking spaces to dining spaces. Converting parking to dining will create more supply of “safe/social distanced” dining options on The Downtown Mall and in the City. This additional supply is paramount right now because The Mall and the City have very little safe outdoor dining options (i.e. enough distance between tables and guests). Please remember: The outside patios on The Mall and across the City of CVille are not very large, which means very few people can safely patronize a restaurant on The Mall or the City right now.

2. Convert the entire Downtown Mall into an outdoor biergarten.

When converting The Downtown Mall to an outdoor biergarten, the City of Charlottesville should setup a “check-in” point at the heart of The Mall. This “check-in” point will be staffed by one-two employee(s) making at least $15 per hour. This “check-in” point would serve as a transaction spot.

We, as consumers, will pay the City of CVille $2 for a wristband & a plastic cup. With the wristband on and a plastic cup in our hand, we will head to local restaurants on The Mall and purchase local craft cocktails, local wine, local cider and local beer. Our favorite restaurants will pour these local spirits into this City-issued plastic cup. Only into the plastic cup.

We will then walk up and down The Mall with this plastic cup while social distancing & supporting our beloved restaurants.

This strategy will result in the following:

1. This strategy will encourage Charlottesvillians & Central Virginians to return to The Downtown Mall to EAT, DRINK, SHOP, LAUGH and LOVE.

2. This strategy will jumpstart our local economy.

3. This strategy will slowly help return the thousands of jobs that we lost over the last 60 days.

4. This strategy will help locally-owned restaurants climb out of what appears to be insurmountable debt.

5. This strategy will trickle over and positively impact the locally-owned shops & music venues on The Mall.

6. This strategy will help create new revenue that is nowhere to be found in the city budget. The $2 per wristband/cup creates upfront revenue. This is Day 1 revenue from an incremental revenue source. The outdoor biergarten creates backend revenue through the meals tax.

7. This strategy will inspire/create incremental tax revenue that can be allocated directly to teachers, firemen, police officers, EMTs, who are otherwise not getting raises in 2021.

8. This strategy will help fund roads, the improvement of schools and other citywide infrastructure initiatives.

9. This strategy will help the City close the gap with Albemarle County with Phase 1 reopening opportunities.

Please remember that Phase 1 reopening guidelines offer Albemarle County’s food and beverage businesses an advantage over Charlottesville’s because of the value proposition of land and patio space. Albemarle County’s restaurants, vineyards, breweries and wineries have large patios and much more land to offer paying customers. This will likely translate into more reopening revenue for Albemarle vs. Charlottesville in the next 60 days. The City of Charlottesville should be very concerned about losing temporary marketshare to Albemarle County during this reopening period.

In conclusion, I respectfully ask Charlottesville City Hall and Charlottesville City Council to act now. Action is needed. We must be innovative as a community to survive a pandemic of generational proportions. ~ I Love CVille