A restaurant in Dallas is coping with the pandemic by leveraging Better Block’s approach to adaptive urbanism. The Better Block crew had constructed several wooden market stalls that were going to be used for a pop-up outdoor market in the Allen project. Now, they’ve used them to turn Oddfellows into an actual outdoor market, stocking the shelves with the restaurant’s stock and selling neighbors staples that may be difficult to find at the stores that remain open.

This free program will allow restaurants and liquor-serving establishments to create temporary patios on streets, on-street parking spaces, or sidewalks either in front of or adjacent to their venues.To hasten the process, template patio drawings are being offered and a staff team has been dedicated to reviewing the applications. Permits will be issued within two business days for applications that meet requirements.

Called “CafeTO”, the city program is identifying sidewalk and right-of-way space, including “parklets,” adjacent to bars and restaurants that can be made available for outdoor dining with physical distancing to ensure minimal chance of virus infection. The normal patio approval process will be dramatically streamlined, city council will be asked to waive fees, and the Ontario government is agreeing to help quickly address any liquor licensing issues

Selecting a group of qualified and competent bidders will thus allow the city to be more agile in awarding professional service contracts by mutual agreement. In this way, boroughs and city departments as well as the Sociétés de développement commercial will be able to call on pre-qualified teams to design and implement measures that address their issues, such as modified routes and user mobility, safe boarding and disembarking of public transit users, waiting lines for businesses, outdoor sales and consumption areas, functional and technical pickup and delivery spaces, rest areas and street furniture (e.g., washrooms, benches, no-contact garbage receptacles). Given the experimental nature of the temporary development projects both currently underway and to come, it is important to make good use of a range or high-performance solutions that can be deployed throughout the city

With funding from the City, the organization will assist more than one hundred merchants in need with help adapting their establishments to comply with social distancing and health measures issued by public health authorities. The ASFQ will also produce a commercial adaptation guide, slated for release in June. Until October, a team of professionals will lend a hand by carrying out health audits and adaptations for small independent businesses in order to reduce the risks of spreading COVID-19.

10 sessions designed to help operators reopen, reinvent, and rebuild their businesses. All sessions will be recorded and sent out to registrants post-series. Sign up to secure your spot and ensure on list to be sent a recording.

Run a restaurant or food service business? Have questions about reopening and operating safely during COVID-19? Join us Wednesday, June 10th 10AM – 11:30AM for a FREE Q&A session. The expert panel includes the Chief Medical Officer for Island Health and the BC Restaurant and Food Association. These sessions are co-hosted by the Downtown Victoria Business Association and Community Micro Lending. As we adjust to living and working with COVID-19, we’re offering two sessions to help businesses reopen and operate safely: Two webinars planned:
Restarting Restaurants & Food Services on Wednesday, June 10th 10AM – 11:30AM
Restarting Retail on Thursday, June 11th 11AM – 12:30PM

The City of Ottawa has announced the seasonal washrooms at Andrew Haydon Park, Britannia Park, Westboro Beach, Mooney’s Bay Beach and Petrie Island beaches. Water fountains at the five parks and beaches will also be turned on.

This program is in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and will support local restaurants by providing flexibility to restaurant owners while at the same time ensuring safety standards and measures remain in place. The Patios Everywhere Program is intended to address patios that are outside of the downtown Business Improvement Area (BIA).

Toolkit prepared by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce’s Canadian Business Resilience Network is designed to provide guidance, or access to guidance, for business owners and senior managers responsible for re-establishing their operations while ensuring the health and safety of operators, staff, customers and the general public is at the forefront.

Platform for supporting local businesses includes:

The Portland Bureau of Transportation will allow local business owners to apply for permits so they can offer food and other services in the public right-of-way. This goes far beyond a simple sidewalk dining permit and is expected to fast-track a host of new possibilities like customer queuing zones in what used to be parking spaces and dining tables and barber chairs in streets and parking lots.

Streetsense partnered with @LISC_HQ and @USBank  to create a Commercial District Recovery Guide, a roadmap to support #COVID19 recovery efforts in downtowns and commercial districts. Download now http://go.streetsense.com/recoveryguide

Updated regularly, this site includes links to webinars, organizations, publications and tools.

A generic prevention guide and interactive and printable quick references are offered for all work environments. A poster serving as a reminder of the preventive measures for workers’ health in the context of COVID‑19 is also available. The proposed measures must be adapted by the different sectors to their specific conditions to guarantee that operations can resume or continue under the safest and healthiest possible conditions. Special tools for certain economic sectors are also available.

This toolkit will help businesses and workplaces incorporate pandemic planning and preparedness into reopening in a manner that prioritizes the health and safety of business owners, employees, customers, and the community. The six wmain guidelines were developed from reviewing several key federal and provincial resources, and are applicable to the various Windsor-Essex County businesses and workplaces across all sectors that remain open or are preparing to reopen.https://www.wechu.org/sites/default/files/edit-resource/em-safe-return-business/covid-19-toolkit-small-businesses-safely-reopen.pdf

Cornwall Economic Development has developed an online Business Reopening Toolkit to help in this process.The Toolkit is a collection of resources that include a 6-page guidebook, and a number of posters, fact sheets and guidelines – including an easy to use calculator for determining the maximum number of people allowed in a store under current social distancing guidelines.

Funding to the Town’s Emergency Operations Centre will go towards portable toilets for domestic farm workers (and vulnerable people). These porta-potties with hand washing stations will be installed on the Town-owned lot on Main Street, at the Oliver Visitor Centre, and the empty lot on Station Street (adjacent to the food bank). Bilingual signage promoting social distancing will be installed in parks, ball fields, beaches and the hike and bike trail. Funds will also go towards bylaw enforcement (via park ambassadors) in May. The ambassadors will patrol local parks seven days a week providing education on social distancing.

The lack of public toilets in Toronto has long been a glaring public health issue, but the issue of access to restroom facilities has grown more urgent as the public is encouraged to wash hands frequently in order to curb spread of COVID-19.Earlier this month, the city opened eight portable washrooms and hand-washing stations and six locations with showers and access to drinking water for people who are experiencing homelessness.

A newly released map details the various rest locations where portable toilets have been installed at select commercial vehicle brake-checks, inspection stations and chain-ups.The B.C. Trucking Association has pitched in with a food truck project, offering free meals for truckers at cardlock fuel stations in Chilliwack, Kelowna, Kamloops and Prince George.

Nanaimo councillors agreed to reallocate $25,000 from the city’s downtown event grants budget toward the program.

All of this is in addition to the 50 km of temporary “slow streets” that will be created by July that benefit pedestrians and cyclists. A number of cities around the world have also made ambitious road reallocation changes that either create “slow streets” or establish new bike lanes.

The first phase of the Halifax Mobility Response plan began with the widening of sidewalks in high traffic areas, traffic signal modification and the implementation of temporary loading spaces for businesses in downtown Halifax and Dartmouth. Slow Street Implementation: Approximately 20 streets will be designated as ‘slow streets’. They will be open to local traffic only, to reduce vehicle volumes and to create a space for residents to walk, roll and cycle while adhering to physical distancing guidelines. Shape Your City Halifax project page has been created to provide residents with an opportunity to share suggestions

This document is a framework to provide best practices and protocols that the industry has worked together on. This information was put together with a consortium of experts in many different restaurants and
foodservice establishments in BC.

These posters are meant to be put up in downtown shops to communicate in a friendly way physical distancing rules, how many people allowed in a store at one time, and other changes that are in effect during COVID19 times.

The “Mayor’s Reopening and Recovery Working Group,” which is conducting the community stakeholder and resident feedback initiative, was launched on April 22.  Residents looking to provide feedback on the city’s eventual reopening strategy can do so by filling out an online reopening survey on the city website at www.brampton.ca

The Wellington West Business Improvement Area (BIA) and Crowdfund Canada have launched LOVE.WellingtonWest.ca, a joint crowdfunding program to support more than 550 member businesses across Ottawa neighbourhoods.This is the first pilot for the Community Wealth Sharing Initiative, supported by the McConnell Foundation, and is offered at no charge. Residents can invest in the success of local merchants. In return, merchants can choose to offer rewards like store credit, services, or product giveaways to be redeemed whenever they decide.

McConnell Foundation is piloting a Community Wealth Sharing Initiative in Alberta to expand a crowdfunding site so any business in Alberta can launch a crowdfunding campaign without any fees so that businesses can keep all the money they raise, whether or not they reach their fundraising goal.