Turf Wars: Neighbors Gone Wild

“Just recently,” says Adam Ritter, owner of the Sidecar Bar, “I saw Point Breeze is distributing a flier saying, ‘Don’t let this happen to your neighborhood,’ and there’s a picture of Sidecar and people eating at the tables on the sidewalk. We are a symbol of doom, like ‘Oh no, there’ll be babies and dogs!’”

David Ansill wanted 20 seats outside his now-shuttered eponymous restaurant, and says the neighborhood group would support only four.

And why is that?

Ansill stares off into space, his jaw set tightly, his frustration still palpable roughly three years later. “I don’t know,” he says. “Noise. Crowds. Whatever.”

Jim Campbell, who is involved in the South Street West Business Association and the South of South Neighborhood Association, explains why outdoor dining garners so much opposition: “Outdoor dining is wonderful, but it’s also the taking of a public right of way for private profit. What if you have to walk that gauntlet of tables every day, or you’re elderly, or if you’re in a wheelchair? You might feel differently about outdoor dining on your block then.”

For Ansill, the lack of support mattered a lot. Winning over the neighborhood means a bigger pool of customers, and Philadelphia’s permit process has generally operated on the premise that community support is necessary for most, if not all, projects — unless the development has some larger political importance. In short, if the community group wants you, you’ll get your permits. If the community group says no, you won’t. “I think if we had the outdoor seating I wanted,” says Ansill, “we’d still be open.”

That’s debatable. Ansill’s menu was heavy on the offal, not exactly a big draw outside the adventurous foodie community. Still, to most people, the prospect of 20 paying customers on the sidewalk at 3rd and Bainbridge might sound like a good thing, signaling that the South Street corridor isn’t just for tacky t-shirts, cheap beer and occasional outbreaks of violence anymore.

What’s not debatable is that the neighborhood groups are often perceived to hold so much power that restaurateurs won’t press for the zoning board’s approval without the neighborhood’s okay. Starr himself, at his now-closed Washington Square restaurant, wanted sidewalk seating. And who knows? Washington Square the park might have played host to another scene — like Rittenhouse Square, only historically themed. Sources with knowledge of the negotiations say a powerful longtime resident (one they won’t identify) put the kibosh on Starr’s deal, which suggests that sometimes these disputes aren’t about neighborhood groups so much as the people who control them. And sometimes the dynamic isn’t even about old residents fighting the new, but new residents assaulting the old.

Neighborhood newbies at Symphony House, a Carl Dranoff residential high-rise, have in fact challenged a South Street icon. The Jamaican Jerk Hut is a very popular place for Philadelphians to take out-of-towners in summer. And the restaurant’s funky aesthetic, with live reggae music adding to the color, famously provided a backdrop to the movie In Her Shoes. But a Symphony House resident petitioned the city’s department of Licenses and Inspections to destroy this popular scene.