By Ashley Salvador | December 8, 2020 |
Here’s the understatement of the year: the pandemic has been brutal—absolutely brutal—for small businesses and local economies. Depending on who’s doing the estimating, somewhere between 40% and 85% of restaurants won’t survive the winter. Celebrity chef Andrew Zimmern warned back in August of a restaurant “extinction event.” Brick-and-mortar retailers are getting hit hard too…perhaps especially those small, locally-owned shops that form the quiet fabric of what makes our towns great, but who are less likely to keep up with expensive rent while sales are tanking.
The towns and cities who will lead the way along the road to recovery are those willing to be flexible, responsive, and creative in helping entrepreneurs (a) survive—perhaps by opening some streets and public spaces for outdoor dining—or (b) start something new.
Among the best ideas we’ve heard in this regard is to legalize Accessory Commercial Units. You’ve probably heard of Accessory Dwelling Units, perhaps by one of their other names: granny flats, mother-in-law units, garden suites. They are, as Strong Towns senior editor Daniel Herriges has said, “a quintessentially Strong Towns approach to urban growth and affordability issues: bottom-up, decentralized, incremental, scalable and adaptable. They exemplify the principle of steady, distributed neighborhood change as the antidote to sudden, disruptive neighborhood change.”
Accessory Commercial Units (ACUs) are similar, writes Ashley Salvador in the article below. “Think granny flats,” she says, “but granny gets to sell homemade jam and baked goods out of the front half of her suite.” Salvador explains why ACUs are good for entrepreneurs, good for customers, and ultimately good for cities. She also explains why ACUs are functionally illegal in most cities; they don’t fit well in our current land use, zoning, or lending paradigms. Right now is the time to do something about that.