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# City government responsible for state of Santa Monica
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/city-government-responsible-for-state-of-santa-monica/
- Published: 2003-09-19T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T02:57:47.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Pier, #archive-import, Homeless

After a longtime restaurant on the Santa Monica Pier was replaced by Bubba Gump Shrimp it prompted this week’s Q-Line question: “Do the city’s politicians do enough to keep locally owned businesses here? What should be done?”

Here are your responses: ■ “The 50-year-old Boathouse restaurant should never have been booted off the Santa Monica Pier and given to Bubba Gump Shrimp, which was the worst thing that ever happened. Also, all the locally owned businesses that were on the Promenade have all disappeared. All we get are expensive, company-owned stores where most of the people in Santa Monica can’t afford to go to.

Something should be done with the City Council in this city. Michael Feinstein should be impeached, recalled, or anything to get him out of there. He is the worst city councilman we ever had.” ■ “Because of the worsening vagrant population, many businesses and long-term, good citizens are gradually beginning to leave Santa Monica. Get rid of the filthy, panhandling vagrants and maybe the shoppers and diners will return and businesses will prosper again. Did they ever think of that? I know there are other problems here. Hassles with City Hall permits and taxes and whatever, but I think the vagrant problem is a significant problem.” ■ “Sears-Roebuck, Hot-Dog-On-a- Stick, and the Merry-go-round are the only businesses left in the downtown and pier area that have been there for ages. Now that the commercial rents in the Santa Monica area are so very expensive, it is difficult for small businesses to survive. Still, any entity opening a business on the Santa Monica Pier should understand that the pier caters to hard-working, blue-class workers. Whether they will find a high-tone restaurant such as Bubba Gump Shrimp to their liking will remain to be seen.” ■ “I don’t know if the politicians, so-called politicians, or city government do enough to keep locally-owned business here, but I haven’t seen any effort here on the part of small, locally-owned businesses to help each other and strengthen their ability to survive. I know that independent book stores, nationwide, have been doing that and it’s helped some of them resist being put out of business by big chains. If this attitude doesn’t change, I don’t know what the city government could do about it. I support locally owned businesses. I wish that locally owned businesses would do more to support themselves. By that I don’t mean support themselves by making more money, but supporting each other by understanding their situation and working together to improve it. We don’t need all these giant chains in Santa Monica. It will change Santa Monica into some other place entirely. The business people need to educate themselves and learn how to get along with each other and get something going so that when they go to City Hall, they can go with a plan that they already know will work.” ■ “An answer to this week’s question: No. 1, the rents in Santa Monica for small businesses are very high, especially in the Promenade. No. 2, Santa Monica is overrun with homeless. On the Promenade, no matter what day of the week or time that you go, you find that the homeless have their rear ends plopped all over the benches, laying down — you name it, they’re doing it. This discourages tourists and the residents of Santa Monica from shopping on the Promenade. They don’t have the problem with the homeless, so much, on Montana because it’s an upscale area. But around the downtown area, it’s terrible. I’ve lived in Santa Monica for two and a half years and haven’t seen Santa Monica do anything about the homeless. They need to clamp down on this. If they do, maybe they’ll get the smaller businesses back.” ■ “The politicians are practicing their usual double-speak, giving lip service to locally owned business and then throwing them out in favor of large, money-making chains. My family really sympathizes with the owner of the Boathouse, or late owner of the Boathouse. They were emotionally attached to the business, and didn’t overcharge, and we’re going to miss the Boathouse. We’ve been packing that by for 45 years and I think it’s a sad commentary that we’re all becoming cookie-cutter businesses down there. Once there was talk about changing the tourist office into the shape of a dolphin, and it gave me the idea: How about putting a large fence around Santa Monica and charging admission? Maybe residents would then be recompensated for putting up with all the traffic, hordes of tourists, lack of parking, parking tickets, higher prices for everything, etc. Anyway, let’s not vote these politicians back in again. Someone is responsible.” ■ “I have some information that I’m a little frustrated about, as a Santa Monica resident. I’ve lived in Santa Monica my whole life; I shop at a local lumber store here, Fisher Lumber, as well as a building materials store here, Borge Brothers. My brother is a contractor here in Santa Monica and we understand that Fisher Lumber is going out of business. It’s the only lumber business here in Santa Monica, without going to the West LA area, from my understanding. We also heard that the Borge Brothers were going to be picking up the lumber business from Fisher Lumber. However, after talking to the folks at Borge Brothers, they’re not sure that that’s going to go through because the city of Santa Monica is not moving on giving them proper permits for what they need to do to create an adequate lumber yard. We’re kind of bewildered by this because here in Santa Monica there will be no lumber once Fisher is gone. Borge Brothers is willing to take over that business, from our understanding, but they can’t because the city of Santa Monica is not moving on a permit. So, just a perfect example of how businesses that have been here for decades are not being supported by our city politicians.”

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on September 19, 2003.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/091903.pdf?ref=smdp.com)