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Promenade Plans Still in Flux

By Oliver Lukacs

Feb. 17 -- While making no decisions, the Promenade Uses Taskforce “inched a little closer” last week to its ultimate goal -- drafting a list of recommendations to the City Council that will help strike a balance of uses to guarantee the commercial strip’s economic longevity.

The meeting Monday, which was primarily a presentation by City staff, laid out the fruits of nearly a year's-worth of research, analysis, and public input gathered by the planning and resource management departments and Project for Public Spaces, the New York-based "place-making" consulting firm.

After tracing the trend of restaurants slowly disappearing from the popular strip -- since 1992 the number of eateries and the number of seats for dining have dwindled from 49 to 31, and from 5,138 to 3,669 respectively -- staff and the consultants unveiled their recommendations to reverse the pattern.

PPS -- whose recommendations are geared toward making the strip a world-class tourist destination -- unfurled a laundry list of goals both for the short-term (1 to 2 years) and long-term (3 to10 years). They included:

Bayside District Board member Rob Rader, who was among only a handful in the audience at the Ken Edwards Center, said that if the Promenade aspired to be world-class it would have to begin by having “safe, clean, well-lit bathrooms.”

The state of the bathrooms, Rader said, has been a longstanding complaint of many community members, including the homeless.

Rader then unfurled his surefire “three Ps” solution to the problem. “Performing, [public] Programming, (such as the Farmer’s Market), and Parking.”

When taskforce members attempted to prioritize the goals, City staff member Susan Frick reminded the group that their decisions, while important, are being made at a time when the City is strapped for cash due to a looming budget shortfall.

“The money is tight, and were actually cutting back on capital projects,” Frick said.
Bayside District Board member Bill Tucker, who sits on the taskforce, argued that because the Promenade is a money-generator for the City, it should get special consideration.

“The Promenade in general is loosing trend and I think it needs a little funding,” said Tucker.

Councilman Herb Katz, who is also on the taskforce, wasn’t worried about funding. He said funding would come “if we prioritize it and put it in someone’s eye and say we want this done.”

Katz was more concerned about focusing too much attention on securing funding and forgetting to draft an implementation plan for the project.

“That’s one of the problems with this City. ‘Gee golly, we got the funds, but we don’t have a way to implement it,’” Katz said. “We got to just do it,” he added, funding or no funding.

Task force member and property owner Merlyn Ruddle agreed. “I feel like were being pennywise and tom-foolish,” if the taskforce doesn’t “engage those guys (the consulting firm) to help us design” the implementation, she said.

City staff then spoke of “leveling the playing field” by creating disincentives for retail stores, which are displacing restaurants who can’t afford the high rents, and incentives for restaurants. But the plan, which would require changing the current regulations didn’t go over with taskforce members who worried hat it would be discriminatory.

“It might start with good intentions,” said Katz, “but it’s going to end with ‘do I like you,’” referring to the possible abuse of the added regulatory powers if retail stores were burdened with extra approval requirements.

Other incentives to bolster the number of restaurants included streamlining the permit process for eateries that serve alcohol and exempting Downtown restaurants from requiring permits other than a business license to operate.

As it stands “it is very hard to open a restaurant” Downtown, said Kathleen Rawson, the executive director of the Bayside District Corporation. “Getting through the process, just takes forever.”

Councilman Michael Feinstein, who chairs the taskforce, instructed the members to listen to the options, go home, draft a list of recommendations, and come back at the next meeting March 4th prepared for a long, productive brainstorming session where all the philosophical arguments can be aired.