(This is the first in a series of articles exploring opinions on the draft of the Specific Plan for downtown Manhattan Beach, which the council will review in July.)
A few years ago, Kelly Stroman, a 17-year resident of Manhattan Beach, didn’t know what a Specific Plan was.
But on the first week of her new job as the executive director of the Downtown Manhattan Beach Business and Professional Association, the nonprofit which represents downtown businesses, she had to ask the city council for one, so she soon learned.
A Specific Plan, she found out, is an official zoning document for a geographic area used by city planners.
“Four years ago, there was a lot of conversation going on,” she said from her office above Nikau Kai Waterman Shop on Highland Avenue recently. “All of a sudden, everything hit a point like, ‘Wait a minute, we’re losing so much of the core of downtown.’”
Rising rents meant small, independent shops were closing and real estate offices and banks — businesses that don’t inspire as much foot traffic — moved in.
The council imposed a temporary zoning moratorium that meant businesses couldn’t change what kind of business they were (restaurant, retail, office, etc.) without permission from the council.
In mid-2014, Mark Danaj started as the new city manager and recommended hiring the Urban Land Institute, a city planning organization, to evaluate downtown.
The city also hired Pacific Municipal Consultants to develop a Specific Plan.
The Urban Land Institute asked the city to identify “stakeholders” and invite them to give feedback. In addition to interviewing over 100 individuals, the institute suggested that a longterm downtown residents group be formed. With some help from the city, one came together last year.
The Downtown Business and Professional Association’s original request for a Specific Plan “indirectly activated other groups to come together,” including the Manhattan Beach Property Association, said Stroman.
As the city has been soliciting feedback on the possibilities for the plan, differing opinions have been given. Some residents have even questioned whether the city should create a plan at all.
“Be careful what you ask for,” said Stroman. “All of a sudden, we’ve got lots of cooks in the kitchen. We’re all figuring out how to cook in the kitchen together.”
When the current draft of the Specific Plan was made public in March, Stroman went through the thick stack of papers thinking, “We didn’t ask for that — just to preserve what we already had.”
Stroman has read every page of the plan, highlighting and taking notes. She’s also sent out emails encouraging people to attend the workshops held by the city and give their feedback to the council.
And yet, acquaintances have remarked how silent she’s been in expressing her opinions on the plan, she said.
“I’m a pretty vocal person,” she said. “People have been asking me, ‘Kelly, why don’t you speak?’”
She explained.
“A, it’s not all about us,” she said. “It’s important for us to sit back and listen to the stakeholders. It matters to us — they’re our customers.”
Secondly, she said, “there are parts of the draft that are not our area of expertise for us to weigh in on.”
She mentions the proposal to add turrets to buildings, which the city’s development staff asked about in a workshop.
“We’re not architects,” said Stroman. “It’s not our place to lodge a response. It’s not going to affect us as business owners.”
On the whole, however, she feels the Downtown Business and Professional Association got what it asked for.
“Everybody pretty much agrees the ground level should be restaurants or retail,” she said. “That was our number one concern from the get-go.”
The Downtown Residents Association has objected to the way the Urban Land Institute, in its final report, recommended that increasing visitors should be the focus of the Specific Plan.
The report said that visitors support 60 percent of the overall retail space and make up almost 75 percent of restaurant patrons. In order to sustain that and make sure these businesses continue to operate, it said, the town would have to continue to attract visitors.
The Downtown Residents Association balked, saying downtown should be for the residents.
“A symbiotic relationship between the residents and businesses needs to be cultivated as our primary goal,” said Carol Perrin, the leader of the Downtown Residents Group. “The demographics of our residents is something most businesses would kill for. If all our residents shopped downtown, it would be more than vital. Unfortunately, too many things in the draft Specific Plan will turn more residents away.”
The council said that it heard the residents, quickly disposing of the Urban Land Institute’s suggestion of increasing the two-story height maximum.
But Stroman doesn’t want the visitors to be forgotten.
“I feel that we’re the voice of the visitor, the consumers,” said Stroman. “Who’s speaking up for the visitor? We’re close to LAX, we have the pier. We definitely are a tourist destination,” she said.
She points out that regular tournaments, such as the Charlie Saikley 6-Man and the Manhattan Beach Open, bring in outsiders.
“We can’t all of a sudden shut our doors,” she said. “We’re not a gated city.”
If that’s what the town wanted, “it probably should have done that 20, 30 years ago,” she said.
“We’ve always been a town that’s been welcoming,” she said.
Stroman also points out that a substantial number of downtown business owners are also residents, such as Maureen McBride, who owns Yorktown and Tabula Rasa; Suzanne Lerner, who owns Michael Stars; Linda McLoughlin Figel, who owns {pages: a bookstore}; Mike Zislis, who built the Shade Hotel; and the Greenberg family, which owns Skechers.
Another development downtown which led to the Specific Plan was the rise in chain stores. The Urban Land Institute advised against a ban, and suggested managing the influx through zoning instead. The Specific Plan doesn’t contain a ban, but proposes requiring formula stores to get a special permit and/or limiting the square footage of chain stores to 1,600 square feet.
“I think keeping a smaller footprint and the height guidelines will inherently discourage larger formula stores from coming,” said Stroman. “Or they can create a boutique version of something,” she added.
The requirements in the Specific Plan wouldn’t apply to existing stores, but to new ones.
She notes that a surprising number of stores that could be considered chains today got their start in Manhattan Beach, such as Fresh Brothers, Simmzy’s and True Religion, whose downtown store was the company’s first retail store.
“We recognize that part of our town is already made up of a mix of formula restaurants and stores,” said Stroman. “But we also recognize that we need to keep a strong and healthy mix of independently-owned businesses.”
The draft also proposes limiting the size of frontages for any kind of store.
Stroman said that while her group supported a limit, they didn’t know what it should be.
“We know what we don’t want,” she said. “We don’t want something that’s huge.”
There’s also the issue of parking.
“We hear from locals, ‘We don’t go downtown anymore,’” Stroman said, repeating some residents’ comments at a workshop. “That’s a huge concern for us.”
Residents seemed to be pretty evenly split over the idea of building new parking structures. Given the strong disagreement, it appears that parking might mostly be left out of the Specific Plan and dealt with later on.
In the meantime, Stroman is pushing to bring in the Downtowner, a fleet of free electric golf carts that are summoned by app. According to city staff, the council will review the suggestion at a future council meeting.
“Our big concern is raising rents, but we can’t affect that in the Specific Plan,” she said. “We believe in the free market. We want our businesses to be successful and we want small, independent businesses to be able to thrive. They’re the fabric of our community. They’re our heart and soul.” ER
