Restaurants wanting to use Naftzger Park for patio seats strike deal with board

Restaurants that want to use Naftzger Park land for outdoor dining and drinking have struck a deal with a Wichita board.

The agreement unanimously approved by the Board of Park Commissioners on Wednesday reduces the space available to the restaurants and does not allow fencing to enclose the patio area. The use agreement now goes to the City Council for ratification.

Jon Rolph’s Thrive Restaurant Group plans a HomeGrown restaurant and a new Peace Love & Pie concept in the downtown Spaghetti Works District.

“We’re just thinking about people being able to be out there sitting and eating some bacon or scrambled eggs or a sandwich and feeling connected to the community that you’re sitting in,” Rolph said.

The agreement allows customers to drink alcohol on the portion of public property inside the restaurant’s designated patio space. Planters will be used instead of fencing to mark the boundaries of the patio, City Manager Robert Layton said. The developer must pay for the planters and remove them when their use ceases.

“The idea is that they will be lower (than planters elsewhere) so that those at the tables will be able to see into the park, and also they’ll be less foreboding, so to speak, for people that are in the park looking toward the building,” Layton said.

With the building facing west, Rolph said he doesn’t expect the breakfast and lunch restaurant to need umbrellas for shade.

“The less we stick out as a sore thumb or something different from the park ... we want people to feel like they are in the park when they’re sitting there,” he said.

The park board’s use agreement with Douglas Development LLC includes about a third of the space that was previously proposed to the City Council in a lease agreement.

A city map lists a 10-foot-wide patio with an area of 765 square feet running along a portion of the east side of Naftzger Park. Douglas Development will pay $2,000 per year for the use of the public property, and that money will be used for maintenance of the park.

“It was always intended that we would see some private sector development along the east edge of the park, and we did anticipate there would be outdoor dining,” Layton said.

The City Council was originally presented a 10-year lease for 2,285 square feet of park land where developers of the Spaghetti Works District would pay $3,000 to $4,000 per year in rent. The lease first appeared on the council’s consent agenda, where routine and non-controversial items are typically approved in bulk with a single vote and without discussion.

The new Naftzger Park use agreement’s term is three years, with two annual renewals. The rent is more than what Wichita restaurants would pay for similar seating on a city sidewalk.

Wichita restaurants pay $36 per seat for sidewalk cafes, Layton said, and Rolph said he predicts 20-30 seats in the park patio area. The high end of the estimate would $1,080 — about half of what the city will be paid under the use agreement.

Use agreements have been used with park land before, Layton said, including Greater Wichita First Tee, Emery Park RC Raceway, Wichita Shooting Stars and Wichita Rowing Association

Jason Gregory, executive vice president of Downtown Wichita, said the city has set a precedent for allowing restaurants to use city property.

“There’s sidewalk cafe permitting,” Gregory said. “Particularly in Old Town, a lot of bars and restaurants have cafe seating that sits on the public right-of-way. They have a use permit process.”

“We knew this was a unique situation because it’s parkland and not public right-of-way, but I think all along the design intent was to have that activated edge,” he continued. “And obviously great concepts like HomeGrown and Peace Love & Pie, those are exactly what we want to see realized, having that space that they can utilize for the private sector but that also benefits the public realm.”