COVID-19 Dining decks will come down in January
by Mark McDermott
The Manhattan Beach outdoor dining deck experiment is coming to a close. Sort of.
The City Council on Tuesday night unanimously agreed to require the downtown and North End restaurants to dismantle the temporary dining decks beginning January 3. But the Council also signaled a willingness to allow more permanent outdoor dining decks to take the place of the temporary structures.
The decks were part of a larger Council-led effort, one that included utilizing not only sidewalks but for several months parts of Manhattan Avenue, to help restaurants survive pandemic restrictions which limited indoor dining. Those restrictions no longer exist.
Mayor Pro Tem Steve Napolitano, who along with Councilperson Richard Montgomery was part of the council subcommittee that worked with the restaurants to find creative solutions during the height of the pandemic, said the time had simply come to live up to the “temporary” part of the agreement. He said going straight from temporary to permanent decks would not be fair to downtown residents who have been impacted most by the outdoor dining encroachment.
“That wasn’t the commitment that was made to the folks downtown, who will be part of the discussion of any permanent outdoor dining,” Napolitano said. “I’m not saying it’s a slam dunk or guaranteed thing, but we all said we want to get to that discussion. In the meantime, I think we need a timeout from the outdoor dining as it is now.”
Montgomery said the decks served their purpose.
“Everyone survived,” he said. “We thought it would be a short term COVID experience. We didn’t realize it would be 21 months.”
Councilperson Joe Franklin said the City owed a debt of gratitude to both downtown restaurants, and residents for making this experiment work, but agreed that it was time to take a break. He said the argument that outdoor dining decks give Manhattan Beach a European flair have merit, but miss a key point.
“It’s just so enjoyable and family friendly and convivial and just brings so much joy to people’s lives,” Franklin said. “We’re by nature social animals, and we want to see each other, and be outside, and especially here because we’re blessed with such weather. But the things we’re not blessed with are plazas, like we see down in Hermosa Beach. We’re also not blessed with streets that lend themselves easily to closing down to accommodate dining, like we see in Richmond Street in El Segundo, and parts of Redondo Beach.”
Downtown resident Martha Adreani said restaurants with outdoor decks currently have far more than their legal occupancy capacity, and the result is more diners, traffic, congestion, and trash.
“There are health and safety issues we didn’t have prior to the dining decks, clutter and trash on sidewalks, reduced traffic lanes in already narrow downtown streets,” she said. “Traffic accidents are on the rise. The dining decks have prevented adequate street cleaning. Trash has accumulated trash receptacles in downtown alleyways.”
“Enough is enough, downtown,” said resident Jim Burton. “I think the parking issue has had a tremendous impact. Those of us who live downtown, many people don’t have any parking at all.”
The City is currently foregoing an estimated $54,932 in revenue each month due to the use of 62 parking spaces as dining decks. Restaurateur Peter Kim, who also heads the North Manhattan Business Improvement District, said he and other owners have calculated an overall loss of $1.3 million in annual business revenue due to decreased parking for the two dining decks in North MB.
“I don’t think it’s fair,” Kim said. “I think the decks should come down.”
Restaurateur Mike Simms thanked the Council but also noted that parking didn’t seem to be an issue during recent holiday events.
“In the last few months, the car show as well as the holiday open house did actually close down a lot of the streets, and magically thousands of people showed up with all that loss of parking,” Simms said. “So the lesson learned is that if you create demand, create something that’s special, that people want to come to and they’ll just figure out how to get here.”
Restaurateur Mike Zislis said that with the new Omicron variant arriving in LA County, the pandemic is far from over. He said restaurants he owns elsewhere require vaccination to dine indoors, and such mandates are likely coming to Manhattan Beach.
“I think that’s coming,” he said. “If this variant does what the news is saying, we’re going to be in that situation here in all of LA County in the next few weeks. I just think it’s the wrong time to take things away.”
Councilperson Suzanne Hadley vowed to move quickly towards permanent decks, but agreed it was time for the temporary ones to go.
“I’m super proud of the temporary decks. I’m super proud of what we pulled off as a city,” Hadley said. “I’m sad as a patron that they will be coming to an end, but I do owe the downtown residents [notice] that I’m determined to follow through…I hope we’ll keep the pedal on the gas to get into discussing permanent [decks].”
Mayor Hildy Stern agreed.
“We do have a vision that we want to continue to look at this as a long term solution,” Stern said. “This isn’t the end of this discussion. This is just a pause to recognize the temporary nature of the decks, so that we now can take all this information…to do this in a way that encompasses all of the all of what we have learned.” ER