Montgomery County, VA Special Events & Permits: Sidewalk Dining & Cafés (2026)

The county's zoning ordinance sets sidewalk-dining widths only where land is zoned or rezoned PUD-TND, a traditional-neighborhood-design district the Board of Supervisors approves for New Urbanist-style development in the unincorporated county. Section 10-32 requires sidewalks on both sides of every street in the Neighborhood Center and Residential Neighborhood subareas, separated from the roadway by a planting strip or on-street parking. The baseline sidewalk width in the Neighborhood Center, where restaurants and retail sit, is 10 feet. Where a business places outdoor restaurant seating or a similar use directly on the sidewalk, the code raises that minimum to 16 feet so diners do not block the walkway.

Every sidewalk configuration, regardless of width, must still preserve a 5-foot clear pedestrian zone free of tables, chairs, or planters, and any planting strip provided must be at least 6 feet wide. Because a PUD-TND development plan is approved lot by lot through the county's rezoning and site plan process, the Zoning Administrator in Planning and GIS Services checks these dimensions against the approved plan before issuing site plan or building approval for an outdoor dining area. Land zoned conventionally (A-1, R-1, C-1, and the county's other base districts) carries no comparable countywide sidewalk-cafe permit in this code; the 16-foot rule is specific to PUD-TND streetscapes.