Businesses and local government are both scrambling to comply with a new state requirement that coastal restaurants must replace on-street parking displaced by temporary outdoor dining spaces.
San Diego City Council recently accepted regulations by the California Coastal Commission ordering “beach impact zone” restaurants to replace public parking removed by pandemic-driven outdoor dining. San Diego’s beach impact zone is defined as the coast and a quarter-mile inland between Sunset Cliffs in the south, and Torrey Pines State Reserve bordering Del Mar on the north.
Created in the midst of COVID, outdoor dining otherwise known as “streetaries” were established to help restaurants stay afloat when indoor dining was prohibited. But they became so successful the City allowed them to stay via the creation of a new “Spaces as Places” program. That program involves an application process to make temporary restaurant outdoor business operations permanent, allowing parking spaces on City streets to remain when the applicant agrees to the conditions.
City Council members Joe LaCava in District 1 including La Jolla and Pacific Beach, and Dr. Jennifer Campbell in District 2 including the Peninsula, Mission Beach, and Clairemont, weighed in on the new requirement mandating restaurant replacement of on-street parking.
“A silver lining of the pandemic was embracing outdoor dining on our sidewalks and parking areas,” said LaCava. “The City Council’s acceptance of the Coastal Commission’s preference to preserve on-street parking provides certainty to beach restaurants despite facing additional obstacles. City staff is committed to maximizing outdoor dining, parking for retailers, and coastal access.”
“The newly approved Spaces for Places ordinance will give beach visitors a place to park while enjoying outdoor dining at some of San Diego’s most popular beach spots,” said Campbell. “The California Coastal Commission regulations and recent City Council ordinance approval will create a balance between outdoor dining and parking spaces for local, and out-of-town visitors.”
Denny Knox, executive director for Ocean Beach MainStreet Association, the community’s business improvement district, said the new parking replacement directive is problematic.
“We continue to ask questions of the City’s Development Services Department about the deadlines, fines, and the ‘how to’ aspect for restaurants that want to use existing public parking spots for outside dining,” Knox said. “We have a handful of restaurants interested in doing what’s necessary to continue using parking spaces for dining.
“A number of our restaurants have decided not to go through the complex and expensive application process because it doesn’t make economic sense for them. For others, it makes economic sense to pursue the application process. It’s on a case-by-case basis,” Knox said.
Restaurateur Scott Slater, who owns Slaters Enterprises and just opened Mission + Garnet, a new 4,000-square-foot food court with six eateries under one roof in Pacific Beach, believes the reasoning behind the new parking replacement regulation “doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. If the City is concerned about parking, this will only free a few dozen spaces and eliminate business-friendly and frequently used seating, while the same City is eliminating hundreds of parking spaces in favor of bike lanes that are rarely used.”
Joe Terry, current president of Bird Rock Community Council, said the City advisory group has not discussed the parking replacement issue. “Therefore I don’t know what its position will be,” he said while adding, “This will certainly be a difficult adjustment for some restaurants if the City approves the Coastal Commission’s recommendations.”
