The results of a 2017 survey conducted by the Pendleton Downtown Association and the Pendleton Development Commission found there was plenty of parking in the downtown area.

Pendleton’s uptick in downtown has brought an equal increase in outdoor seating. Some establishments on Main Street have a hankering for more room than the sidewalks allow.

Kim and Rodney Burt own and operate OMG! Burgers & Brew, 241 S. Main St., which manages a few tables and chairs on Pendleton’s faux wood sidewalks. With the weather turning better, they said, those seats fill up first.

“I love to sit outside,” Kim Burt said. “On the nice days, you get to visit with the people. … There’s all kinds of benefits to it.”

To gain more outdoor space, she said, they are fixing up the restaurant’s back patio with shrubs and an awning. The Burts also said they would be interested in a parklet in front of their storefront.

The Pendleton Development Commission in 2015 tried to revive the idea of parklets, publicly accessible decks that replace on-street parking spots with space for seating and planters. Charles Denight, associate director of the commission, said parklets have proved popular in other small cities such as Astoria, La Grande and The Dalles.

During public meetings, Denight recalled, some people were against the idea because they would reduce downtown parking, and the idea faded away.

Addison Schulberg would like to see more Main Street parklets. He helps operate the Great Pacific Wine And Coffee Co., 403 S. Main St., the restaurant his parents, Ken Schulberg and Carol Hanks, established a few decades ago. Curbside dining at the restaurant is common during good weather.

“A lot of folks specifically ask to eat outside,” Addison Schulberg said. “I don’t blame them — I want to be outside.”

The narrowness of the sidewalks, however, limit the GP’s outdoor seating, he said, but a parklet or wider sidewalk would provide more room. Parklets also come with the benefit of allowing establishments to bring their style to the outdoors, he said, and even create space to promote events.

“We would still like to have it so much,” Schulberg said.

Whitney Minthorn at Moe Pho Noodles & Cafe, which recently opened near the Great Pacific, said outside seating is good for business. People walking and driving past get to smell and see the food, as well as customers enjoying themselves.

“Any time we have someone sitting outside, we get busy,” he said.

While some see downtown parking at a premium, Minthorn said losing a few spaces would not hurt businesses due to all the parking in and around downtown.

“There’s plenty of parking,” he said. “You just have to walk a little bit.”

Denight and Molly Turner, the Pendleton Downtown Association’s executive director, reached that same conclusion in their study last year. They looked at 650 parkings spaces in and around downtown — the 311 public parking spaces and the 339 on-street parking spaces — and found the overall average of vacant parking spaces was better than 50 percent. And the vacancy average for the six public parking lots near Main Street often neared 70 percent.

Turner said the Downtown Association would get behind a push for parklets if there was more interests from downtown businesses, and obviously some already support the idea. But the bigger issue is that vacancy in the public lots in and near downtown, including the large lots on either side of the 500 block of South Main Street.

“We’d need to see increased utilization of the public lots,” she said.

Kim Burt said Pendleton blocks off Main Street parking during Round-Up week, plus the south end of Main loses parking on Fridays from May through October to accommodate the Pendleton Farmers Market. There’s also the annual car show that takes up a portion of Main, and all those events draw people downtown.

The larger point, she said, is Pendleton is a tourism spot. Parklets and the like make for an inviting downtown. Just how much would the loss of a few spaces matter, she questioned, if tourists keep coming back to Pendleton.