South Street bar and restaurant Bob & Barbara’s Lounge — a neighborhood staple since 1969 — will start tearing down its short-lived streetery next week after losing a monthslong battle with the city over a road resurfacing project that requires removal of the structure.
The business spent about $35,000 on the U-shaped bar it built on South Street after the project got approval from the city’s Department of Licenses and Inspections in January. At the time, the city failed to mention the upcoming road work, the owners say. Bob & Barbara’s didn’t find out they would need to remove the streetery until May, when they were informed by a city contractor for the Streets Department project.
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“We wouldn’t have built the thing if we knew that there was an upcoming road resurfacing project,” Oskar Duva, one of the bar’s managers, said Tuesday.
Like many bars and restaurants in the city, Bob & Barbara’s relied on outdoor dining to stay afloat during the public health restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic. The city’s early outdoor dining program didn’t have overly stringent regulations of what businesses could do to create space for customers outside. Duva said the city’s initial oversight was relatively accommodating to the business community.
That all changed in October 2022, when the city released new guidelines for streeteries and other outdoor dining arrangements. Bob & Barbara’s original streetery — just a walled-in overhang built to shield customers from rain — was no longer compliant and had to be removed by early 2023.
Over the next year, the business went through the city’s step-by-step process to design and obtain approval for a new streetery. The process requires review by multiple city agencies, including the Art Commission and the Streets Department, before L&I grants streetery licenses that cost businesses $1,750 per year.
“It’s my understanding that road resurfacing projects require years of planning, so the Streets Department was certainly aware of this project coming even at the time that they approved our design,” Duva said.
In an Instagram post Monday, Bob & Barbara’s announced the impending demise of its streetery at the hands of a city government it claimed “made a big ole oopsies” when it handed out a license for a road that was about to be ripped up and repaved.
“After many months of battle we regret to inform you that Goliath has won and decreed our structure to be moved, all at expense to the business of course,” the bar wrote.
An update to the guidelines
Located just west of 15th Street, Bob & Barbara’s is cemented in Philly lore for inventing the citywide special — a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon and a shot of Jim Beam for $4. In the mid-1990’s, the Duva family took over the business from its previous owners and maintained its friendly reputation as a dignified dive bar. The owners partly credit surviving the pandemic to having a makeshift streetery, one that required staff to lug bar furniture in and out each day.
The new streetery at Bob & Barbara’s isn’t the type of structure that can easily be removed and rebuilt. It has 12 built-in stools and a thick bartop. The streetery was modeled using guidelines published by the city when the new regulations were established in 2022. Duva said he consulted with an engineer to ensure the design complied with the city’s rules and followed its recommendations.
But the month after the bar got its streetery license, the city put out an updated set of guidelines that stated all structures must be removable within 48 hours of receiving written or verbal notice from a city official. The newer guidelines advise businesses to “avoid build-outs that would require special lifting equipment, such as cranes, or time-intensive disassembly efforts for removal.”
Bob & Barbara’s discovered it had invested heavily in a streetery that the city could order them to remove within 48 hours.
“That was the first time I ever saw that,” Duva said of the updated guidelines. “Construction was already underway at that point, so there wasn’t really any going back. We figured even if we have to spend a good chunk on building a legit streetery, it was going to pay off in the end. We would have changed our design if we had been made aware that we would have to be able to remove it at a moment’s notice, essentially.”
The city updated its guidelines, in part, to reflect what was already required by law. One of the reasons streeteries are approved for one-year licenses is that city streets are public property.
“The law specifically requires that streetery structures be removable within 48 hours, and that they be removed for public projects,” the Streets Department said in a statement Tuesday. “This is, again, because they are placed in the public right-of-way, not the restaurant’s property. Other streeteries have temporarily moved for public events like marathons, and for paving projects.”
The city declined to comment about its communication with Bob & Barbara’s during the streetery application process. Officials also did not answer questions about how the agencies involved in the streetery program coordinated when approving Bob & Barbara’s design and license, and whether they might have foreseen how discussing the road resurfacing project would affect the bar’s plans.
‘Unwilling to compromise’
Philadelphia’s streetery program has been criticized by City Controller Christy Brady for being too complex and making the process too costly for many businesses. During the pandemic, upwards of 800 streeteries operated in the city. By the time the controller’s office examined the issue in August and published a report with recommendations for improvements, fewer than 30 had been approved under the new permitting guidelines.
Weeks after the Streets Department contractor notified Bob & Barbara’s of the planned road work, the business found a city order posted on its streetery stating the structure needed to be removed by June 30. City officials said the notice was posted on June 6, giving the bar weeks to comply instead of the minimum 48-hour notice.
Bob & Barbara’s contacted a lawyer and filed for an appeal of the decision, noting how there had been lapses in communication about the road work.
The ongoing resurfacing project — which covers South Street from 27th to Broad streets — was postponed over the summer. Duva said the business used that time to exhaust all of its legal options, but it was given a new deadline of Sept. 10 to remove the streetery.
Bob & Barbara’s then filed an emergency injunction to stop the order and they were granted a court hearing last week. It didn’t go as they had hoped.
“(The city is) unwilling to compromise or reach any kind of agreement,” Duva said.
In her decision on the matter, Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas Judge Sierra Thomas Street ruled in favor of the city’s order to remove the streetery. She noted that the application and licensing process for streeteries requires businesses to attest to the 48-hour removal policy, which is baked into the city code to give priority to scheduled road maintenance and utility projects.
“On the application for the Streetery License, applicants sign an attestation that they will abide by the removal requirements,” the Streets Department said.
Whether Bob & Barbara’s was informed about the road work, they legally had acknowledged the city’s terms by applying for the license. And even if the design the bar chose was based on guidelines that failed to stress the importance of building removable structures, the court sided with the city because of the attestation.
“The argument was that the streeteries are supposed to be designed to be able to be removed within 48 hours notice,” Duva said. “That is part of the city code, but it was not specified in the set of guidelines that our whole design was based on.”
In February, Duva shared his frustration over the amount of time it took to get the new streetery approved under the city’s guidelines. In court documents Bob & Barbara’s filed with the city, the business noted that it had to undergo at least two revisions of its streetery design. Despite that, the city never mentioned that it would behoove the business to make their structure easily removable — let alone the fact that South Street was being resurfaced later in the year.
In hindsight, Duva said he wishes Bob & Barbara’s could have taken a different and safer approach.
“I wouldn’t have designed it to the level that it is now,” he said. “I would have tried to make it something that could be removed more easily. Based on what I knew at the time, what we built was what the city wanted us to build. Based on what they published, we tried to follow that as closely as we could.”
‘A lack of consideration’
With about a week to go before the streetery is removed, Duva said the part of the saga that stings most is that the city hasn’t shown any willingness to work with Bob & Barbara’s. The Streets Department said the city can’t afford to further delay the repaving of South Street, which was originally scheduled to be completed by the end of August, because doing so could jeopardize federal funding that covers the majority of the cost.
“They’re just being relentless,” Duva said.
Although the contractor for the road resurfacing on South Street suggested his crews could work around the streetery, the city didn’t view that as a solution, Duva said. The court ruling also offered no financial relief from the city to make up for the bar’s investment. Removing and rebuilding the structure after the road is resurfaced would cost another $30,000.
“It would require a lot of work, a lot of heavy machinery, and a lot of money that we can’t put out right now,” Duva said, noting that legal fees have added to costs associated with the streetery.
The city gave the bar another deadline of Sept. 30 to remove the streetery, but Duva said his contractor can’t do the job until early October.
“Once paving is completed, Bob & Barbara’s will be free to restore the streetery as other restaurants have,” the Streets Department said.
Bob & Barbara’s isn’t the only business on South Street that’s been affected by the resurfacing project and the city’s streetery regulations. About two blocks west, Pumpkin BYOB closed in July after nearly 20 years in business. Part of the reason for the closure was an order for the restaurant to dismantle a $50,000 streetery it had built to be compliant with the city’s new guidelines. It had to be taken down within a month of being completed.
Duva said he hopes the plight of Pumpkin BYOB and Bob & Barbara’s convinces the city to take a closer look at how it’s treating businesses and whether its streetery program has clear enough rules and regulations. In his view, the entire situation could have and should have gone differently.
“Either our design shouldn’t have been approved because of this upcoming road resurfacing project — or, even if they approved it, they should have let us know and we would not have built it,” Duva said. “We would have waited until after the project was finished. It was a lack of communication and consideration for how businesses are trying to operate.”
