17 hours Ago
By Mark Wallach In my almost six years of service on the Boulder City Council, I have heard hundreds of ideas and initiatives from colleagues and citizens alike. Some are inspired, some are merely good and a few, quite frankly, are terrible. Unfortunately, this year we have one of the latter.
A group of citizens is working on an initiative to permanently close West Pearl to vehicular traffic (calling it “Pearl for You”), leaving it open only to pedestrians, and emergency traffic (how this is to be achieved is not specified), presumably due to the great difficulty of walking on the sidewalk between 9th Street and Broadway. The initiative extols the virtues of being able to walk down Pearl Street with one’s family and friends, free from the presence of automated vehicles. Well, what’s wrong with that? Let’s start with the fact that this is probably the most self-indulgent initiative to ever be put in front of the Boulder electorate.
By my count, in the short stretch between 9th Street and Broadway, there are more than 15 restaurants employing well upwards of 100 people (possibly 200). That is a lot of jobs, and many of them will be lost due to restaurant closures if this initiative passes. Why? Because as we saw during the earlier closure of West Pearl, cutting off vehicular traffic leads to a reduction in restaurant patrons, and restaurant revenue.
There are real people who will be hurt by this measure; but the sponsors want you to only focus on the pleasure you will feel strolling down Pearl Street, as you meander past vacant storefronts. Starting and operating a restaurant is one of the most difficult ways to attempt to make a living. Right now our restaurants are struggling with inflation (cost of eggs, anyone?), an increase in the minimum wage (and I voted for that one), and sky-high rents.
A recent article noted that most of the downtown restaurants are reporting stagnant or declining sales even now . But when there are entrepreneurs who have the spirit and courage to attempt this crazy, incredibly challenging task we need to support them to the best of our ability, not doom them to failure. Cutting restaurants off from older, less mobile customers, particularly in bad weather, will have a terrible economic impact on many of them.
How do I know? Almost every restaurant in the area has told us so and has appealed for support against this initiative. And let’s remember: We have done this before, and when we did businesses such as Ozo Coffee experienced a drop in sales of 32% during the closure of West Pearl. Declines were common among other West Pearl restaurants.
Many of our restaurants barely survived the experience; they have no taste for trying it again and have clearly expressed their opposition to this initiative. But what about the environmental benefits of banning cars and getting people to walk on West Pearl? Please. These benefits are below miniscule in the context of our community, our state and our nation.
Are we going to elevate these microscopic gains above the damage we will cause to real businesses and the real people who work for them? I am not willing to do so. And, of course, there are expenditures involved in closing West Pearl and preparing it for pedestrian-only use. The initiative does not even bother to mention those costs.
In an environment where the City is already financially stressed, and facing even greater difficulties in 2025, how can any expense for such a narrow purpose be justified? Our restaurants are at the heart of our identity as a city, and constitute an economic engine that benefits the entire community through the generation of sales taxes. We are famous as a restaurant town, not a town that puts restaurants out of business. The whim of this initiative’s sponsors is not a path we should be going down, but that is the path we will be following if this proposal were to pass.
I entered public service to help people, and to make their lives better, not to cause business closures and put people out of work, simply because a few of us find walking on sidewalks to be an undue burden on their pursuit of happiness. It is my considered judgment that this initiative should be withdrawn or defeated, and I sincerely hope that it will be. Our West Pearl restaurants and businesses deserve better.
Mark Wallach is a member of the Boulder City Council. He is writing in his individual capacity, not on behalf of the Council..
