City council to form task force to attract restaurants on the mall
Visitors to the Third Street Promenade may go hungry for several more months while city officials search for ways to bring more restaurants to what has now become nothing more than a long row of retail stores.
A proposed building moratorium for the mall failed before the Santa Monica City Council Tuesday night, with the majority of councilmem-bers deciding a task force needs to investigate how to prevent the “bleeding out” of restaurateurs from Third Street.
The emergency ordinance would have prevented further development, expansion, consolidation and change in use of commercial properties on the Third Street Promenade, but foes said the effects on commerce could be too substantial for businesses already operating in a RESTAURANTS, from page 1 tight recession.
“This decision should be made by businesses who want to locate along the Promenade and the customers who shop there,” said resident Ann Greenspan, who also is the president of the Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce.
The council was concerned with further losing restaurants to nationwide retailers, who have bought up smaller shops and turned them into massive stores. As a result, it has pushed out local business owners and restaurants.
“Third Street is more than just an economic engine for this city, but a gathering place for the entire community,” said Councilman Kevin McKeown. “We have to take into consideration those concerns too.”
Mayor Pro Tem Richard Bloom agreed.
“If this becomes a monolithic corporate structure with little flavor, then we have let the promenade become any mall constructed across the country,” he said.
Instead, the council postponed taking action until its next meeting, urging the city administration to move quickly on forming a Promenade task force.
In 1996, the city revised the plan for the mall which established a 10-year plan to control growth of retail outlets on the Promenade. However, the actual growth of retail has outstripped the planned growth and the 10-year projection is already met. As a result, what officials have worked so hard to protect is now being threatened, city staff say.
Five restaurants have closed up in the past two years and several more are nearing the end of their leases while at the same time, retail outlets are growing and displacing restaurants. What’s more, sidewalk dining is declining as more retailers consume more street frontage. The Third Street Promenade has about 530,000 square feet of retail and more is on the way.
“The promenade becomes less and less the unique, outdoor community entertainment center and more and more like a standard outdoor mall,” city staff wrote to the council.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on November 28, 2001. Read the original PDF.