Bob & Barbara must get rid of its $35,000 street sign in legal battle with city

South Street bar and restaurant Bob & Barbara’s Lounge — a neighborhood fixture since 1969 — will begin demolishing its short-lived streetscape next week after losing a months-long battle with the city over a road reconstruction project that required the structure’s removal.

The company spent about $35,000 on the U-shaped bar it built on South Street after the project won approval from the city’s Department of Licenses and Inspections in January. At the time, the city made no mention of the upcoming roadwork, the owners said. Bob & Barbara’s only learned they would have to remove the street in May, when contractors for the city’s Streets Department project informed them.

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“We wouldn’t have built it if we had known there was a road renovation project planned soon,” Oskar Duva, one of the bar’s managers, said Tuesday.

Like many bars and restaurants in the city, Bob & Barbara’s has relied on outdoor dining to stay afloat during public health restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The city’s early outdoor dining program didn’t have very strict regulations on what businesses could do to create space for customers outside. Duva said the city’s initial oversight was relatively welcoming to the business community.

That all changed in October 2022, when the city released new guidelines for street food and other outdoor dining spaces. Bob and Barbara’s original street food venue — simply a brick overhang built to protect customers from the rain — was no longer in compliance and had to be removed by early 2023.

Over the next year, the company went through a step-by-step city process to design and get approval for the new street. The process requires review by multiple city agencies, including the Art Commission and the Streets Department, before L&I will grant street licenses, which cost companies $1,750 a year.

“From what I understand, road resurfacing projects take years of planning, so the Streets Department certainly knew about this project even when they approved our project,” Duva said.

In an Instagram post on Monday, Bob & Barbara’s announced the imminent end of its street business at the hands of city officials, who it claims “made a huge blunder” by issuing a construction license for a road that was supposed to be demolished and re-paved.

“After many months of fighting, we regret to inform you that Goliath has won and ordered the relocation of our headquarters, at the company’s expense, of course,” the local government wrote.

Update to guidelines

Located just west of 15th Street, Bob and Barbara is etched in Philadelphia lore as the inventor of a national specialty — a $4 can of Pabst Blue Ribbon and a shot of Jim Beam. In the mid-’90s, the Duva family took over the business from its previous owners and maintained its friendly reputation as a dive bar worthy of its reputation. The owners attribute its survival through the pandemic in part to its makeshift street-style eatery, which required staffers to lug in bar furniture every day.

The new street at Bob & Barbara’s isn’t the type of structure that can be easily removed and rebuilt. It has 12 built-in stools and a thick bar top. The street was modeled according to guidelines published by the city when the new code was established in 2022. Duva said he consulted with an engineer to make sure the design complied with city codes and followed his recommendations.

But a month after the bar received its street license, the city issued an updated set of guidelines that said all structures must be dismantled within 48 hours of receiving written or verbal notice from a city official. The newer guidelines advise businesses to “avoid developments that would require special lifting equipment, such as cranes, or time-consuming demolition work to remove.”

Bob & Barbara discovered it had invested heavily in a street that the city could order removed within 48 hours.

“That was the first time I saw it,” Duva said of the updated guidelines. “Construction was already underway, so there was no turning back. We figured that even if we had to spend a lot of money to build a legal street, it would still be worth it. We would have changed our design if we had known we would have to be able to remove it at any time, basically.”

The city has updated its guidelines, in part, to reflect what was already required by law. One reason streets are approved for annual licenses is because city streets are public property.

“The law clearly requires that street structures be removed within 48 hours and that they be removed for public projects,” the Streets Department said in a statement Tuesday. “This is again because they are located in a public right-of-way and not on the premises of a restaurant. Other street structures have been temporarily relocated for public events, such as marathons, and for paving projects.”

The city declined to comment on any communications with Bob & Barbara’s during the streetery application process. Officials also did not respond to questions about how the agencies involved in the streetery program coordinated in approving the Bob & Barbara’s project and license, or whether they could have anticipated how discussing the road reconstruction project would affect the bar’s plans.

“Unwilling to compromise”

Philadelphia’s streetery program has been criticized by City Controller Christy Brady for being too complicated and making the process too expensive for many businesses. The city had more than 800 streetery businesses operating during the pandemic. By the time the controller’s office investigated the problem in August and released a report with recommendations for improvements, fewer than 30 had been approved under the new permitting guidelines.

A few weeks after a road contractor notified Bob & Barbara’s of the planned roadwork, the business found a city ordinance on its street that said the structure had to be removed by June 30. City officials said the ordinance was posted June 6, giving the bar several weeks to comply instead of the minimum 48-hour deadline.

Bob and Barbara contacted a lawyer and filed an appeal against the decision, citing the lack of communication regarding the roadworks.

The ongoing resurfacing project — which spans South Street from 27th to Broad — has been postponed until the summer. Duva said the company has used that time to exhaust all of its legal options, but has been given a new deadline of Sept. 10 to remove the street.

Bob & Barbara then filed an emergency injunction to stay the order and were granted a court hearing last week. It didn’t go as they had hoped.

“(The city) is not willing to compromise or reach any agreement,” Duva said.

In her decision in the case, Philadelphia Common Pleas Judge Sierra Thomas Street ruled in favor of the city’s order to remove the streeters. She noted that the streeter application and licensing process requires companies to certify a 48-hour removal policy, which is written into city code to prioritize planned street and utility maintenance projects.

“As part of the street operating license application, applicants sign a declaration that they will comply with waste disposal requirements,” the Streets Department said.

Regardless of whether Bob & Barbara were notified of the roadwork, they legally recognized the city’s terms when they applied for the license. And even though the design the bar chose was based on guidelines that did not emphasize the construction of movable structures, the court sided with the city because of the certification.

“The argument was that the streets should be designed to be removed within 48 hours,” Duva said. “That’s part of the city code, but it wasn’t specified in the set of guidelines that our entire project was based on.”

In February, Duva shared his frustration with the time it took to get approval for the new street under city guidelines. In court papers filed by Bob & Barbara with the city, the company noted that it had to undergo at least two changes to its street design. Yet the city never mentioned that the company had to make its structure easy to remove — let alone that South Street would be repaved later in the year.

In retrospect, Duva said he wishes Bob & Barbara had made a different, safer decision.

“I wouldn’t have designed it to the level it is now,” he said. “I would have tried to make something that could be more easily removed. Based on what I knew at the time, what we built was what the city wanted us to build. Based on what they published, we tried to stick as close to that as possible.”

“Lack of prudence”

About a week before the alleys were to be removed, Duva said the most painful part of the saga is the city’s refusal to cooperate with Bob & Barbara. The Streets Department said the city could not afford to further delay the South Street reconstruction, which was originally scheduled to be completed by the end of August, because it could jeopardize federal funding that covers most of the costs.

“They are just relentless,” Duva said.

Although a contractor repaving the South Street road suggested that his crews could work around the street, the city didn’t see that as a solution, Duva said. The court ruling also didn’t offer any financial relief from the city to offset the bar’s investment. Removing and rebuilding the structure after the road is repaved would cost another $30,000.

“It would require a lot of work, a lot of heavy equipment and a lot of money that we can’t spend right now,” Duva said, noting that legal fees have added to the costs associated with street vending.

The city gave the bar another deadline of Sept. 30 to remove the street surface, but Duva said his contractor won’t be able to do the work until early October.

“Once the paving is complete, Bob & Barbara’s will be able to repave the street as other restaurants have done,” the Streets Department said.

Bob & Barbara’s isn’t the only South Street business affected by the resurfacing project and city street regulations. About two blocks west, Pumpkin BYOB closed in July after nearly 20 years in business. Part of the reason for the closure was an order for the restaurant to dismantle the $50,000 street surface it had built to comply with new city guidelines. It had to be demolished within a month of completion.

Duva said he hopes the plight of Pumpkin BYOB and Bob & Barbara’s will convince the city to take a closer look at how it treats businesses and whether its streetery program has clear enough rules and regulations. He believes the whole situation could and should have been different.

“Either our project shouldn’t have been approved because of the upcoming road resurfacing project — or even if it had been approved, they should have told us and we wouldn’t have built it,” Duva said. “We would have waited until the project was done. It was a lack of communication and consideration for the way companies are trying to operate.”