tl;dr: ask follow up questions!

I feel like this article (like many in the Banner, sadly) could have been much more informative and useful if the reporter had dug a bit deeper in his interviews. In particular, most of the owners interviewed said they would take down their parklets because the $10/sqf fee was prohibitive. OK, ask what fee would be viable for them? Would you be comfortable with $5/sqf? $7? $3? Should there be a low fee to start, with a timed escalation over 2-3 years to give you time to determine the ROI? Would credits/discounts based on quality of facility design, etc. be useful?

Especially when combined with newly-imposed design standards, if you're asking people to pay a (potentially) prohibitive fee and ALSO spend even more on a (non-permanent) redesign/redevelopment of what they have already paid for—all without a strong idea of the revenue that it will generate minus the pandemic influence—we're just going to lose the amenity and the city is going to lose any potential revenue. There needs to be a balance struck between city revenue, aesthetic considerations, and the fact that these business owners really don't know what that ROI is going to be in a changed environment. An article like this could have jumpstarted that conversation, but as is, basically reiterates what we've already heard in other outlets and in the survey.

More broadly, this is an issue I've seen in all the coverage of this issue—the city set an arbitrary $10/sqf rate, and there seems to have been no substantial public discussion at all about whether that's the appropriate rate or not—just a zero sum alternative that there should be no fees. Dig deeper, Banner (or Sun, or Beat, or whatever).