If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.
That’s what the Santa Barbara City Council decided Tuesday, voting to essentially leave alone the State Street outdoor dining enclosures and adjacent street parklets.
City staff had proposed a variety of changes, including banning new parklets, limiting new outdoor dining areas to only movable planters and barriers, and requiring outdoor dining enclosures to comply with aesthestic guidelines by July 22.
“It seems a bit random right now, quite frankly, to be requiring this right now,” Councilwoman Meagan Harmon said. “I really want us to take the approach of the least harm right now. It’s really remarkable what our local businesses have been able to accomplish this past year.”
The council did direct staff to remove sidewalk dining tables and chairs that had not been permitted by the city before the COVID-19 pandemic, to make it safer for people with disabilities and others to use the sidewalks. Those restaurants can still apply to have outdoor dining, but they must go through a process.
State Street, particularly the 500 blocks, quickly transformed into a vibrant, active hub of people a year ago after the city opted to close seven blocks of State Street to vehicles. Many restaurants invested tens of thousands of dollars into outdoor dining structures to serve people outdoors. The side streets built parklets to serve people. Some restaurants placed chairs and tables on sidewalks in the public right of way without getting permission from the city.
“A large majority of enclosures that are out there at this point are not compliant,” said Sarah Clark, the city’s parking program manager.
City staff had proposed cleaning up the area temporarily. The city’s emergency economic recovery ordinance expires next March, so essentially everything will remain status quo until that time. The city is working on a State Street Master Plan, and the State Street subcommittee will work on the look of State Street going forward.
Council members and business owners who called in urged the city not to make too many changes because, for the first time in a long time, State Street is popping with activity.
“We didn’t just stay open,” Councilwoman Kristen Sneddon said. “We thrived.”
She said State Street became a destination “even under the cloud of COVID.”
Sneddon praised the city’s flexibility to immediately close State Street to vehicles and allow outdoor dining after Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered all outdoor dining outside more than a year ago.
“We’re in the experimental phase,” Sneddon said. “I like experiments. I think this is a rare period of time where we don’t have to be so bogged down by some of our more formal processes.”
Aron Ashland, owner of The Cruisery, urged the council not to listen only to the architects and the members of the Historic Landmarks Commission who don’t like the aesthetics of State Street.
“I don’t think we can forget that we were really headed in the wrong direction before COVID,” Ashland said. “Where did the really stringent guidelines from HLC get us as a city? I would say we were headed in absolutely the wrong direction.”
— Noozhawk staff writer Joshua Molina can be reached at jmolina@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
