DMI Position Statement on Making Streatery Permanent

Downtown Madison, Inc. (DMI) strongly supports legislation seeking to make the highly successful Streatery program permanent in Madison. Since its inception in the summer of 2020, the Streatery program has positively and uniquely transformed how our community interacts within public spaces downtown and throughout Madison. Madisonians have rethought how we can use public spaces to connect, dine, socialize and be outdoors opening more opportunities for our community to interact and experience our city.

Created in response to COVID, Streatery found ways to keep our community safe through more outdoor activities. The added ability to create more activities saved many downtown businesses. Without these outdoor dining and retail locations, more locally owned and operated downtown businesses would have permanently closed, thereby altering even more lives in our community. By using public spaces often dominated by single occupied cars in new ways, the City created a model program to not only help downtown businesses survive a difficult period but a future template on how we ensure more of our public space is used by the entire community.

DMI has long supported creating a vibrant and welcoming downtown for all. One way to ensure vibrancy and accessibility is through more communal outdoor spaces through programs like Streatery. The complete transformation of downtown’s South Pinckney Street into an open, inviting, and busy outdoor dining space creates a welcome energy and vibrancy in downtown. This is just one example of how Streatery has made downtown Madison a more attractive, welcoming, and engaging place for our residents and visitors.

We strongly encourage the City Council to support making Streatery permanent. By taking this first step, we will allow our city to continue to rethink how we use our public space thereby finding new ways to bring our community together more often and in more places. Spending more time together in outdoor accessible locations will benefit us all. In creating a permanent Streatery program, we can reimagine so much more of our city and downtown.

For more information, please contact Jason Ilstrup at jilstrup@downtownmadison.org.