Some businesses on Kirkwood Avenue are unhappy with the city’s decision to keep the street open to vehicle traffic this year. They have some hope for future closures, though, as some council members are working on an ordinance to keep Kirkwood closed to traffic more permanently.
Parts of Kirkwood first closed the summer of 2020 to support outdoor dining during the COVID-19 pandemic and encourage social distancing. Since then, Kirkwood was closed to vehicle traffic every summer except in 2024, when the conversion was suspended due to the Clear Creek Reconstruction project.
Last year, the City Council established an indefinite seasonal outdoor dining program that would close the 100-500 blocks of Kirkwood every summer.
But Mayor Kerry Thomson announced Kirkwood will remain open this summer. The city engineer has the right to suspend the program “in cases of emergency, lack of participation, or any other reason that may render the program impractical.” The decision comes after council members pushed back on the possibility at a meeting earlier this month.
“Our responsibility is to try to serve all of Bloomington and to create a thriving downtown as well,” Thomson said in an interview with WFIU/WTIU News. “There's lots of different folks who go to Kirkwood and their safety concerns, parking concerns, but in the end, we did survey all of the businesses impacted by a closure of Kirkwood, and only five of them said that they supported a closure.”
According to data from the city, average daily visits to Kirkwood decreased 8 percent from 2024 to 2025, even though event activity increased 57 percent. Other challenges the city has faced include accessibility concerns for delivery drivers and limited community interest in programming. When no special events were taking place, closed streets “invited negative activation such as crowd surges, violence and threats of violence and high-risk behaviors.”
The city estimates a loss of $80,000 in parking revenue annually due to the closure, and revenue from the program in 2025 was only $17,500.
City Council member Kate Rosenbarger believes that $80,000 number is inaccurate.
“We know with data, that when you take spots away, people park elsewhere,” she said. “So, we're not losing that. We're seeing an uptick in parking on Fourth Street and Sixth Street, right? So, it's not when spots are taken away, people just don't come downtown. That’s just not accurate.”
Thomson said the city plans to expand some festivals that have previously been limited due to dining taking up space. There will still be a parklet model, where businesses can apply to use metered parking spots in front of their property along Kirkwood to set up outdoor dining.
Businesses have until March 3 to submit parklet applications. Weather permitting, the reduced outdoor dining program will begin in April and end on Nov. 10.
Some restaurants disappointed with new reality, others approve
Businesses along Kirkwood had mixed reactions in response to the city’s decision to keep the street open to vehicle traffic and instead rely on parklets for outdoor dining.
Savannah Sater, co-owner of Greetings, a store that sells Indiana University merchandise on Kirkwood, thinks it’s a good idea to keep the street open to cars this summer. She didn’t see many businesses using the street much when it was closed to vehicles. It was also harder for employees to find parking and get to their shift on time.
“It just made parking, like, really awful,” she said. “And for us, and I'm sure a bunch of the businesses, it makes it a lot harder for us to bring all the stuff in. And then they took away our loading zone, and then people get yelled at if they just park right there and try to bring stuff in. So, it makes it a hassle.”
Sater said she hasn’t seen a difference in sales when Kirkwood was open versus closed to cars. She only sees one pro to keeping Kirkwood closed to cars.
“In a way, it's good, like during games and stuff, because everyone can come out and celebrate on the street when the street is closed,” she said. “So that is the one thing that we like about it. But besides that, we don't really like the street being closed at all.”
Galen Cassady, co-owner of Uptown Café, said he’s okay with Kirkwood being open to traffic this summer. He wasn’t planning to participate in the program this year because an apartment building is under construction across the street. With that construction comes a lot of noise and dust.
“It's not going to be the most pleasant outdoor dining experience being right across from that on our block,” he said.
For that reason, Cassady doesn’t think it’s even worth participating in the parklet program and spending money on constructing a deck for seating like in past summers.
“Another just specific thing to our block is we have to deal with a pretty significant slope, so we have to build a deck to be able to be level,” he said. “And I would say the investment that takes is just with the construction project going on isn't worth it.”
With less seating capacity, Cassady said he plans to focus on marketing the restaurant to attract and retain customers.
Cassady said one of the positives to keeping Kirkwood open to traffic is that it’s easier to access buildings. But he still thinks there’s room to improve the design and infrastructure of the outdoor dining program.
“Although we really appreciated it in the past, for our service and our ambience here, sitting people right on the street on asphalt and a hot summer day wasn't the most appealing thing,” he said. “And I think that they could make some changes to that design to make it a really cool space in the future, but that's just going to take some time and money that the city would have to invest in.”
Other restaurants disapproved of this new reality.
Michael Fox, owner of Lennie’s, said keeping Kirkwood closed during the summers has helped his business; the additional seating capacity he’s gained from putting out tables on the street helped him make more money. Each month the road was closed last year, Fox made 15 percent more sales over the previous year.
“Particularly on the really busy tourism weekends, like graduation, move in, home football games, it was really, really great having tables out there,” he said. “I thought it definitely created a really fun and inviting atmosphere to Kirkwood.”
But since he can only utilize the space the parklets provide this year, he expects he’ll see slightly lower sales.
“The parklets are kind of an eyesore there,” he said. “It's not a whole lot of space. The logistics of fitting a four top table in there, it gets a little bit tight. The seats are bumping into the curb and the barriers.”
After the city passed resolutions establishing the indefinite outdoor dining program, Fox said, he invested $8,000 in new tables, umbrellas, plants and planters, thinking he’d be able to consistently use them. But now that Kirkwood will remain open this year, he’ll have to find a place to store them.
“We'll try and fit as many as we can into the parklets, the planters and the plants,” he said. “I don't have a real clear vision on where those might go. Our friends at One World enterprises are storing them for us right now, so they may just live over there for a little bit longer…it's a little bit frustrating as a business owner.”
Bob Costello, owner of the Village Deli and Soma Coffeehouse and Juice Bar, also spent about $15,000 on 14 new tables last year, along with plants, planters and umbrellas, with the idea that it’d be a worthy, long-term investment.
“We were going to put up lights, as well as we wanted to find some kind of way to cool people that are sitting outside when it was really hot,” he said. He was considering “misters” like are used in Florida and other hot climates.
Costello said he will either sell that furniture or find a way to utilize it at the other Soma locations. He doesn’t plan to participate in the parklet program. He doesn’t think parklets are aesthetically pleasing or safe.
“I do not want to sit in front of one of those restaurants with traffic that's going that quickly by,” he said. “You just have people that potentially could get distracted and something could happen.”
Keeping Kirkwood closed during the summer of the pandemic, Costello said, brought people together during the pandemic. He still sees value in that.
“In Bloomington, there's a really limited amount of outdoor areas to eat,” he said, “and anyone that knows when spring arrives, you're looking for somewhere to sit outside and enjoy your meal, enjoy the company of other people, and Kirkwood provided that space for both students and townies.”
In a memo explaining why closing Kirkwood is unsustainable, the city noted limited community and business activation of the space. It also said there are limited resources and staff to organize continuous programming. Costello thinks the city could have done more to collaborate with Indiana University and the community to utilize the street.
“We had a lot of what I would call our ‘buskirkers,’ you know, musicians that wanted to play,” he said. “They could have reached out to the artistic community. There were also people that wanted to put up booths.” He even suggested a farmers market during the week.
Rosenbarger said ways to activate the space could include planting gardens, doing chalk art and putting out more tables so people not going to a restaurant can sit outside.
Chain restaurants also haven’t participated in the outdoor dining program; Rosenbarger said talking with their managers about participating and seeing what barriers exist could help.
“I know everything, of course, takes money. It takes time. I just think this should be a priority for our city,” she said. “It's an area in our city that doesn't exist anywhere else. So, from April to October or November, we have this space where people can be outside, people can walk by, they see neighbors, you know, folks they know, have great conversations, and we really just don't have the opportunity for that anywhere else in our city.”
A potential solution on the horizon
Rosenbarger is working with part of the council to create an ordinance that would officially close Kirkwood, from Walnut Street to Indiana Avenue, to vehicle traffic. The side streets would remain open. The ordinance would make changes to Title 15, which deals with city streets. It would amend Title 15 to add in a new type of street, one that does not have vehicles on it, which she hopes Kirkwood could be.
She thinks closing Kirkwood to vehicles could foster economic development.
“The slower a wallet passes a door, the more likely it is to go in and spend money,” she said. “So in terms of economic development, we talk a lot about places to park, getting cars downtown, bringing cars to this area, but it really is about slow movement, that you're going to meander in somewhere and [it’s] something you're not likely to do if you're passing by in a car.”
An ordinance is part of city code and is more permanent, Rosenbarger said. A resolution, like the one city council passed last year on the outdoor dining program, announces an intent to do something, and is not binding.
“Another reason we really want this to be in an ordinance is because last year, a lot of business owners talked to us about needing predictability and investing in infrastructure for outdoor dining and like ramping up staff for this program,” she said. “And for the past few years, since the pandemic, it was always on the fence, and so business owners didn't really know what to expect, and then it would feel a little last minute to them that they needed to, like, scramble to get everything ready in time.”
Rosenbarger said she hopes the council can discuss the ordinance in the spring.
“If we propose it, I'm hoping that the city can get on board with it,” she said. “I think they do agree it's a great program and that maybe there just isn't the bandwidth right now. I know there are also just some grants out there…And I think there are some creative ways that we can, like, really work together still, and get this to happen for our residents.”
The city plans to do a Kirkwood Corridor Study next year.
