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# Longtime business ordered to permenently shut its doors today
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/longtime-business-ordered-to-permenently-shut-its-doors-today/
- Published: 2002-04-15T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T00:14:21.000Z
- Author: Carolyn Sackariason
- Tags: Business, Pier, #archive-import

*Boathouse slowly sinking into oblivion*

After nearly 50 years on the Santa Monica Pier, the Boathouse has been forced by the city to permanently close its doors today.

Superior Court Judge Diana Wheatley two weeks ago ordered Naia Sheffield to close her longtime family business by April 15 after the city of Santa Monica attempted to evict the historic restaurant last summer to make way for the movie-themed chain restaurant Bubba Gump.

Sheriff’s deputies are expected to take possession of the building sometime this week. But Sheffield and her attorney, Kelly Bixby, are scrambling to save the sinking Boathouse.

Bixby filed a temporary relief in the appellate division of the Los Angeles Superior Court on Friday, asking for a stay on the eviction while they appeal Wheatley’s decision.

A panel of three judges will review the 365-page appeal and are expected to make a decision today. Meanwhile, Sheffield and her dozen or so employees aren’t budging.

“Basically they could lock me out Monday,” Sheffield said Friday. “I absolutely have no idea what will happen.

“I hate not knowing,” she said, adding that she will continue to operate the Boathouse until she is forced out of the building her grandfather built more than four decades ago.

The end is near Over the weekend, many locals paid their last visits to the old watering hole, reflecting on the good times they had over the years. Salsa night, which draws hundreds for dancing on Sunday, was videotaped so it wouldn’t be forgotten.

Meanwhile, Sheffield spent the evening in her office collecting her things.

“I am trying to keep everybody positive, but it’s pretty hard,” she said. “I just want my restaurant.”

The city asked the Boathouse, which was on a month-to-month lease with the Pier Restoration Corporation, to move out last July so Bubba Gump could move in.

But Sheffield refused to leave her family’s legacy, arguing the PRC offered the Boathouse a long-term lease more than three years ago but then reneged on the deal and gave Bubba Gump a lease.

The city filed a lawsuit against the Boathouse to have it evicted so Bubba Gump could renovate the building and move in this summer. If the city gets its way, the building will likely remain empty until at least next spring while Bubba Gump does a $3 million renovation.

Wheatley had ordered the Boathouse be closed down by March 31, but then granted Sheffield another two weeks to get her affairs in order. Now Bixby and Sheffield are appealing Wheatley’s decision, as well as a federal judge’s ruling handed down last month which dismissed Sheffield’s federal lawsuit against the city.

Sheffield sued the city in U.S. District Court claiming breach of contract, violation of her right to due process and unlawful takings. She also claims that the PRC violated the state’s open meeting laws and that the city intentionally misrepresented the lease agreement.

Political wrangling The PRC has been criticized by many that it has engaged in behind-the-scenes political maneuvering for years, particularly when it came to the Boathouse. A controversial series of non-decisions by which the city refused to honor its own mandate to change the membership of the PRC may loom behind the apparent demise of the Boathouse.

Several members remained on the board since the 1980s, until they were finally replaced last summer. But they were kept on long enough by some elected officials to ink the Bubba Gump deal and give the Boathouse the boot.

PRC chairman Michael Klein said the city held a competition for several restaurants to make proposals as part of a bid to do business in the 4,500 square-foot restaurant. Unfortunately, the Boathouse’s proposal was the worst of what the PRC board reviewed, he said.

Klein, along with other city officials, frowned upon what they called a “motorcycle theme” restaurant and thought it might attract the wrong kind of clientele. The PRC wanted a “family-oriented” restaurant theme.

But Sheffield said the PRC is misrepresenting her proposal. The concept was to make the Boathouse themed after the famed transnational Route 66, which ended at the pier. She also wanted to incorporate the American heritage of the Indian motorcycle, similar to what the Guggenheim Museum exhibits today.

Sheffield claims that the entire PRC bidding process was designed as a set up for her to fail. The PRC didn’t properly notify her that a competition was even being held — she had to find out by other business owners on the pier, which forced her to scramble to put together a proposal, she said.

“I didn’t even know what they were asking for,” she said.

The PRC required Sheffield to produce a “request for qualifications,” which asks for financial proof that the business can stay afloat, despite that her family has successfully made it in the same location for more than four decades. She did, however, show she had a $2 million backing from First Financial Corp. to remodel the restaurant.

The PRC tossed out Sheffield’s qualifications request and narrowed down the competition to three restaurants at which time it asked the remaining contenders for a “request for proposal,” a much more detailed plan of what the new restaurant would be.

Sheffield claims she wasn’t given a fair shot and the PRC had made up its mind well before the qualifications request was made. Many of the PRC’s meetings in which the fate of the Boathouse was being discussed were closed from the public and not properly noticed, Sheffield claims.

“Our argument is the RFQ is askew in the sense that it did not properly outline what the city wanted,” Bixby said. “I think there was sabotage.”

Mayor Mike Feinstein has echoed those claims in the past. On Saturday, Feinstein came into the restaurant to say good-bye to the employees and salute a major symbol of the Santa Monica Pier.

“When I come here, you ponder what you are going to lose,” he said. “And we are going to lose this casual, relaxed feel with Bubba Gump.”

When asked how a city can lose one of its icons almost entirely because of politics, Feinstein said the majority won.

“I didn’t vote for it,” he said. “Today’s PRC wouldn’t have voted for this and today’s PRC would have followed different processes.”

Allegations from city and PRC officials that the Boathouse has failed department of health ratings, that it had a sewer pipe leak which polluted the beach last fall and that the restaurant has been the site of constant calls from police are an attempt to justify their decision to kick Boathouse out, Sheffield said.

“They can keep saying it because they aren’t accountable for what they say,” she said, adding none of the city’s allegations are true.

The Boathouse pays the PRC, which operates under the auspices of the city, about $180 a day in rent, based on a flat fee and a percentage of alcohol and food sales. Bubba Gump’s deal with the city will reportedly bring the city a much larger dividend, based on the lease agreement.

“They say they want to take care of the employees in this town and the people who live here but they are following the lead of the greedy people who are trying to get as much as they can,” Sheffield said. “They are going to cut off their nose to spite their face.”

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/55/9f/559f9abc-8372-4a2e-8c2d-27386da4e363/content/images/2026/10/041502-02_01.jpg)

Mayor Mike Feinstein and buddy Joel Ginsberg ‘partied’ at the Boathouse one last time Saturday night. (Photo: Carolyn Sackariason/Daily Press)

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 15, 2002.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/041502.pdf?ref=smdp.com)