Eli Johnson, co-owner of Atlas Pizza and two bars in Portland, said he worries about the future of his bars without additional outdoor seating. But he's run into problems with the application process for the outdoor-dining permit. (Photo by Henry L. Miller)
Portland permits for on-street dining leave some BIPOC-owned businesses behind
The city's Healthy Business permit was intended to prioritize minority-owned restaurants and bars during COVID-19, but gentrification has made that difficult
by Henry Latourette Miller | 1 Jul 2020
With a temporary permit from the city, more than 200 restaurants and bars in Portland are expanding their dining areas onto the street to make it possible for customers to social distance while eating out.
Similar to efforts in Oakland, New York City and Minneapolis, the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) created a Healthy Businesses permit as a part of the Safe Streets Initiative to address safety concerns over reopening the city during the coronavirus pandemic. Restaurants, bars and other eateries got the green light to reopen dine-in options on June 19 as Multnomah County entered Phase 1.
The city has granted two types of permits, both good through Nov. 1. The most widely granted permit allows the use of sidewalks and parking spaces, including on-street parking, and some permits also allow the use of travel lanes and/or the street.
But as thousands of Portlanders continue to protest against police brutality and structural racism, some BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of color) business owners say they're feeling left out of a program that aimed to prioritize equity for marginalized Portlanders.
COVID-19 is devastating Portland's restaurant scene on two fronts: stay-home orders eviscerated the customer base for any business that could not quickly transition to takeout or delivery, and the safety requirements restaurants must meet in order to reopen their dine-in services make it almost impossible to recoup losses.
Some restaurant owners may see the Healthy Business permit as a life raft that could keep them open — at least until the end of fall, when winter makes eating outside unpleasant — or until they must once again close their doors due to orders from the governor amid another COVID-19 surge.
PBOT's Safe Streets Initiative states "equity is our priority" and "involving the most impacted communities in decision making and crisis response is vital."
Irene Marion, the equity and inclusion manager at PBOT who contributed to the Safe Streets Initiative, emphasized that Black businesses are "a priority," adding, "We have had teams that have been making phone calls to over 100 minority-owned businesses and restaurants" to inform them of the Healthy Businesses permit. According to Marion, other Black-owned businesses PBOT focused on included Black-owned barbershops and hair salons.
Much of this outreach has been in coordination with Prosper Portland, which has been hosting culturally specific listening sessions for business owners, with PBOT team members also in attendance to provide information and gather feedback.
But four of the six BIPOC business owners we interviewed for this story feared they would miss out on the benefits of the permit program — two had not even heard of the Healthy Businesses permits until contacted for this article.
Additionally, many business corridors where a concentration of permits have been granted, such as along North Mississippi Avenue, North Williams Avenue and Northeast Alberta Street, are areas where gentrification has pushed many Black-owned businesses and Black residents out. Meanwhile, just one permit for street seating had been granted on or east of 82nd Avenue at the time this article was written. PBOT has created an online map showing where businesses with the Healthy Business or related permits are located.
Several Black business owners that spoke with Street Roots also said they feel they will miss out, but mainly because they operate in a market that is structured to favor white-owned businesses — and in a city that has been unable to prevent gentrification from displacing BIPOC-owned businesses and many of their customers.
Deadstock Coffee is on Northwest Couch Street between Fourth and Fifth avenues in Portland.
Photo by Henry L. Miller
In a phone interview, Ian Williams, owner of downtown's Deadstock Coffee, said he liked the idea behind the permit, but added he only found out about it because he searched for a solution. Even when he joined one of PBOT's listening sessions —where he heard PBOT would prioritize providing signs for BIPOC-owned businesses —he said the experience left him with more questions than answers.
Located on Northwest Couch Street between Fourth and Fifth avenues, Deadstock is near the edge of Old Town-Chinatown. Due to many office workers switching to telecommuting during the pandemic, streets in his neighborhood are now abundant with available parking throughout the day. To Williams, who only counted seven cars when he looked out of his café on a Tuesday afternoon, his neighborhood is an ideal place for setting up on-street seating.
Yet figuring out how to bring PBOT's attention to his street has not felt straightforward, he explained. Part of it has to do with lack of familiarity — Williams doesn't know who to call or where PBOT fits in with other agencies that issue permits for businesses.
When it comes to creating equity, Williams said, "I don't really know what I expect of them or what I want from PBOT."
Amir Morgan, William's friend who is also Black and part owner of Aesthete Society, feels the same way. When Morgan independently mulled the idea of closing part of the street to support his business, reaching out to PBOT "wasn't even a thought," he said.
But knowing to call PBOT didn't make the process easy Eli Johnson, co-owner of the Atlas Pizza chain and two bars. While Atlas Pizza has managed to survive off takeout, Johnson believes both his bars will fail without additional outdoor seating. He applied for the permit "the day it came out," he said.
But he's run into problems.
"I called about it three times now," Johnson said in a phone interview, "And, supposedly the city said they are waiting on guidance from the county to establish the protocols for safe dining and drinking." But he said he heard from friends at Multnomah County that it had already issued that guidance.
Johnson's experience tells him the "bigger fish get fed first," he said — even though larger, more profitable restaurants likely have more resources available to survive the pandemic. Meanwhile, every moment one of Johnson's businesses is closed, the chance he will never reopen increases.
He believes this problem applies to a lot of Black business owners due to systemic racism, which has made it difficult not only to get support from the city, but also to take out loans.
"If you are a Black dude who walks into Chase, and you don't do a million dollars in business (a year), you are not getting the same service as a white dude, who is more likely to do a million dollars in business," Johnson said.
This inability to get financial support trickles into every facet of owning a business, as it makes it harder to invest in improvements and hire support staff to find out what programs and benefits, including the Healthy Businesses permit, are out there.
Johnson said another business owner he knows had "bankers filling out their PPP loans with lawyers and accountants on Sunday morning starting at seven o'clock the day before the program came out on Monday. That's not something Black people get to do."
Even if the Healthy Businesses permit does help the BIPOC businesses owners who get one, not every BIPOC-owned eatery in Portland that took a hit from the pandemic would benefit from more seating in the streets and sidewalks, raising the question of whether "prioritizing equity" means creating equity for marginalized business owners post-pandemic, or creating equity among those who receive a permit.
Amalfi's is a BIPOC-owned Italian restaurant on Northeast Fremont Street and 47th Avenue in Portland.
Amalfi's, a multi-generational, BIPOC-owned Italian restaurant that has operated on Northeast Fremont Street and 47th Avenue for 60 years, was lucky enough to have a parking lot wrapping around the building as well as existing outdoor seating. With this space available it isn't surprising Kiauna Floyd, the current owner, didn't jump at the opportunity to apply for the Healthy Businesses permit when she first heard about it from Prosper Portland.
To Floyd's knowledge, PBOT had not reached out to Amalfi's at the time of the interview, but she noted, "everybody has had to shift and pivot on the fly" to address the pandemic.
She said Prosper Portland and the Oregon Restaurant and Lodging Association (ORLA) have made "phenomenal" efforts to keep her business informed.
Bison Coffeehouse owner Loretta Guzman, who is a member of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes of Fort Hall, Idaho, did not share a similar appreciation for any local agency. Instead Guzman felt like she was on her own when it came to retrofitting her establishment in order to meet safety requirements while staying open.
Bison Coffeehouse in Portland.
Guzman's coffeehouse sits at an angle away from Northeast Cully Boulevard, creating a small, triangle-shaped patch of concrete. After Gov. Kate Brown released social distancing guidelines for businesses like hers, Bison owner Loretta Guzman saw an opportunity and built a platform over the space surrounding her building, allowing customers to access a new walkup window and sit outside.
To keep her business going, Guzman used a Lowe's credit card to pay for the ground to be leveled and concrete pavers and handrails to be installed.
"Other people could afford to close their doors; I had to figure it out," said Guzman, who still had to laid off most of her workforce due to the pandemic and currently keeps Bison running with help from her daughter and niece.
Guzman had not heard about the Healthy Business permit until she was interviewed for this article.
"I don't like dealing with (PBOT), because every time I deal with them its with something that doesn't benefit me," Guzman said, noting a previous encounter where PBOT installed a bike lane in front of her café, which disrupted parking access, without consulting her. "They just do whatever they want to do. We pay the taxes, but we get no say-so," said Guzman.
When asked about keeping her business resilient during the pandemic without support from the local government, Guzman said, "We have to, we're Native. Nothing has been given to us. Our whole life that's what we have had to do; is figure things out. We are resilient people."
While Guzman had to take on debt to retrofit Bison, some BIPOC-owned businesses didn't have to change much in order to meet safety requirements.
Isaiah Bostic opened Batter On Deck, a food cart on Northeast Glisan Street and 157th Avenue, right before the pandemic hit. After years of decline that saw several pods redeveloped, food carts like Batter on Deck are better positioned to serve Portlanders avoiding indoor eateries.
Although Batter On Deck might not benefit from on-street seating as much as others, Bostic shared Johnson's concern that Black business owners might get left behind when they need the support most.
"I just feel like Portland needs to show up," said Bostic. "Let it be known, that we care about the African American community. And they can do it by supporting Black businesses," he said.
Gentrification has been a defining issue for Black Portlanders for more than a decade, and Bostic was one of several business owners interviewed for this article who commented on the challenge of creating equity post-gentrification.
Johnson's comments echoed those of Bostic. He said that gentrification on North Williams Avenue — a hotspot for trendy restaurants where a cluster of street seating permits have been granted — had reached a level he found "disturbing."
Determining whether the Healthy Businesses permit should primarily serve Black residents where they live, clusters of Black owned businesses in historically Black areas like Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, or all Black owned businesses scattered across the city — including in areas that may be mostly occupied by white residents and white-owned businesses — is a question without an obvious answer to eatery owners Street Roots interviewed.
Bostic felt creating a pedestrian mall in Northeast Portland that primarily hosts BIPOC-owned businesses would be one way PBOT could address the inequity caused by gentrification. "It would make the African American community feel like they have something as well," he said.
Such an idea has been considered before. In 2014 the Black Investment Consortium for Economic Progress (BICEP) published a proposal for a "Soul District" with Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard as its core. A map on the Support Black-Owned Restaurants website, iloveblackfood.com, shows a concentration of Black-owned restaurants along Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Killingsworth Street.
Williams echoed the idea of focusing efforts on helping the remaining BIPOC-owned businesses in Portland's historically Black owned business corridors, including Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, but added his concern for concentrating permits in front of businesses that don't need them, such as real estate offices.
During a pandemic and economic crisis where people of color in the U.S. are suffering disproportionately, the Healthy Business permit could be an opportunity for Portland to stand behind marginalized residents after a decade of excluding many Black-owned eateries from its foodie renaissance.
Johnson believes the most important thing PBOT can do to support these business owners is provide more outreach.
"Honestly, when you ask for help, a lot of times people say call a lawyer, and that's just not something — I don't even have the money to do that," Johnson said. "Without the ability to have an advocate that you pay for, (the City) needs to provide an advocate that you don't pay for."
On June 16, PBOT announced it was moving forward with the Healthy Businesses permitting program as Multnomah County entered Phase 1 of reopening.
By June 23, Portland business owners had submitted 387 requests to PBOT for a Healthy Business permit, including 49 applications from people who identified their business as BIPOC-owned. Of self-identified BIPOC businesses, 44% had been permitted, while 63% of businesses that did not identify as BIPOC-owned had been permitted.
BIPOC owned business also had lower rates of issued and in-progress permits, and a higher rate of requests that had been put on hold or cancelled. In an email, PBOT stated the reasons a request might be canceled include "duplicate requests, (owners) not liking the options for space allocation offered, or (owners) trying to use the permit request process for service requests outside of the scope of Healthy Business Permit."
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated PBOT had not reached out to Africa House at Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization. While the person at Africa House who was interviewed was not aware that PBOT had reached out, one of his staff members had worked with PBOT on a webinar to educate the community it serves about the Healthy Businesses permit. Street Roots regrets the error.
Update on July 2: Since Eli Johnson was interviewed, PBOT approved his application for a Healthy Businesses permit at two of his locations. A spokesperson for PBOT reached out to Street Roots following the publication of this article with that information and to say the agency had notified Amalfi's via phone and email. Later the same day this article was published, Deadstock Coffee also received a permit.
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