Council Approves More Dining Al Fresco

By Gene Williams
Staff Writer

April 27 -- Outdoor dining on the Third Street Promenade got a boost Tuesday night, when the City Council approved a recommendation to allow sidewalk café service around the pavilions of the popular walk street.

The 4 to 2 vote marked the latest step in efforts to help Downtown restaurateurs, who are getting squeezed out by well-heeled retailers for limited space.

A European-style café seems poised to move into the North Pavilion on the heels of the council’s decision.

“The whole genesis behind this effort was (that) we were trying to maintain restaurants,” Andy Agle, the City’s interim planning chief, told the council.

City and business officials have long said that keeping restaurants on the Promenade is important to the vitality of the world-famous shopping destination.

However, at least two council members think the move is a step in the wrong direction.

“Sometimes it feels like the direction downhill is upscale,” Council member Kevin McKeown commented.

Out of 19 applicants, a committee headed by City staff identified “Marcel Marceaux” -- a café named after the famous French mime -- as their favorite to set up shop on the public sidewalk around the North pavilion. The café would specialize in French wines, cheese and bread.

McKeown and like-minded Council member Ken Genser felt the Downtown would be better served by encouraging more affordable places to eat.

There aren’t enough low-priced options, they said, especially since the closing of the food court, which featured dozens of small stands selling inexpensive ethnic dishes. Bringing a wine-and-cheeserie to the Promenade, they said, would only add to the problem.

“The affordable food that’s left basically…. is McDonalds,” said Genser. “I think we need to slow down a little bit and take a look.”

Questions also came up about the proposed café’s plans to serve alcohol. The applicant, Stephne Strouk, told the council not to worry.

“It’s not about alcohol,” Strouk said. “It’s about a fine experience with wine and cheese.”

If plans go forward, Strouk’s café would include a counter bar and outdoor seating for 50 around the North Pavilion near Arizona Avenue.

Although it is probably still too early to tell if the European-style café will come to Santa Monica, the council’s move to open the sidewalks around the pavilions is only one of three staff recommendations to extend outdoor dining on the Promenade.

The council will likely look at the other two -- extending café seating to include the center courtyards between the dinosaur planters, and allowing dining at the edge of the sidewalk rather than adjacent to storefronts -- when the council looks at incentives for downtown restaurants again, probably in two months.

Urging the council’s approval Tuesday night, Kathleen Rawson, executive director of the Bayside District Corporation -- which runs the Downtown -- said pavilion sidewalk dining will “bring us closer to our goal of creating more outdoor dining space on the Promenade.”