From Parking Spot to Dining Space: Letting Land Use Fit Local Needs
This article was originally published, in slightly different form, on the author’s Substack, The Friendly City Urbanist. It is shared here with permission. All images were provided by the author.
The building and attached carriage house at 245 E. Water St. in downtown Harrisonburg has been a residence, an office for a drafting service, an environmental consulting business, and a media company. Property records say it was built in 1754. (Local historians believe it may have originally been the detached kitchen and quarters of the enslaved members of the Ott Household.)
Google Maps allows us to look back as far as 2012 to see what the building looked like over time. For most of its modern-day existence, 245 E. Water St. looked like this:
245 E. Water St. in March of 2012. Parking spaces are not delineated.
The small, barn-like structure has survived several different eras of downtown. It was there long before the Urban Exchange apartments were built in the late-aughts, which brought high-density residential capacity to the block.
Satellite image of 245 E. Water St. in 2002 before the construction of the Urban Exchange apartment building across the street.
In 2018, the owners of a local food truck called Urgie’s Cheesesteaks bought the building and began to transform it into a Philly-themed neighborhood restaurant and bar. There were three parking spaces that backed directly onto the street, which led to several near-misses with cars traveling east on Water Street.
By June of 2018, Urgie’s had moved in and parking spaces were marked.
The owners of Urgie’s wanted to replace the three parking spots with an outdoor dining area. In 2018, brothers Steven and Tommy Urglavitch submitted a rezoning request to remove an existing proffer that required the business to have three parking spaces. During the rezoning hearing at a city council meeting, community development staff explained that the parking spaces posed a safety issue for cars backing out into oncoming traffic on a narrow street. However, much of the discussion focused on concerns about where people would park if they removed the parking spaces. From the minutes:
Council Member Hirschmann asked where they think people will park. Mr. Urglavitch stated there are plenty of parking spots downtown and they will ultimately educate their customers as to where to park … [Urglavitch] stated by removing the parking spots he feels the take-out business would decrease, however, pedestrian traffic would increase and encourage a cultural shift. He believes removing these spaces would be in the best interest of the city, the community, and downtown.
The city council ended up voting 3-to-2 to approve the rezoning request. Deanna Reed, Richard Baugh and Chris Jones voted in favor; Ted Byrd and George Hirschmann voted against. That successful rezoning allowed the property to evolve in a changing neighborhood. The Urglavitch brothers added a seated outdoor dining area and repurposed the spaces for cars into spaces for people. From the Daily News-Record in February of 2019:
Steven Urglavitch and his brother, Tommy, grew up in Philadelphia, where small neighborhood bars are a cornerstone of the community. The brothers envisioned re-creating that in Harrisonburg when they first opened Urgie’s Cheesesteaks in fall 2017.
The business has grown from its humble beginnings, from selling cheesesteaks at the Harrisonburg Farmers Market and at local breweries, to cooking under a tent, and now a brick-and-mortar restaurant and bar. Urgie’s Bar … served its first customers on Jan. 26 in the former carriage house at 245 E. Water St.
After the rezoning, Urgie’s added tables and umbrellas where the parking spots used to be.
The patio has gone through several iterations. Today, it is a covered outdoor dining room with picnic tables. Urgie’s has become a community gathering space for James Madison University and Philly sports fans in Harrisonburg. But you don’t have to be an Eagles fan to see how this is a much more productive use of the land than three temporary car storage spaces.
James Madison University football fans wait in line to get into Urgies on game day, November 18, 2023.
The parking-to-dining conversion at Urgie’s is exactly the sort of incremental improvement promoted by Strong Towns. Once the parking spaces could be used to increase customer capacity, the restaurant bar that originally started out as a food truck was able to grow its business yet again. Not only did this conversion create a new social gathering space for local sports fans and residents of the neighboring apartments, but it’s also bringing in more revenue to the city than three unmetered parking spaces.
We should work to reclaim more spaces dedicated to cars in our cities and repurpose them for community gathering places like pocket parks and cafes. What if we allowed this sort of small-scale evolution to occur in certain places by right? What if we auditioned the regularly scheduled closure of portions of Water Street on evenings or weekends during the warmer weather, as Staunton has done on Beverley Street? The pedestrianization of a few parking stalls should inspire us to ask “what if?” and to experiment with reclaiming and repurposing other car-centric places in the city.
Brent Finnegan has served on the Harrisonburg Planning Commission since 2016. He writes about local housing, transportation and climate policy at The Friendly City Urbanist.
