No more amplified music either at Main Street Farmers Market
The omelet stand at the Main Street Farmers Market is gone for the rest of the year.
Ditto for amplified music.
Both were major attractions for the market and as result, patrons are upset they’re gone.
The omelet battle, which has been brewing for months, reached a boiling point last week when hundreds of customers realized the omelet stand was gone.
A flyer circulated through the market by its supporters pinned the blame squarely on Omelette Parlor owner Bob Hausenbauer, who has complained for years that the outdoor stand creates unfair competition for him.
Glenn Gerson, a caterer who operated the Omelette stand, pulled out three weeks ago after settling a year and a half legal dispute with Hausenbauer. The omelet tent was arguably the most popular stand at the market and attracted hundreds of people each week.
However, the dispute was really between Hausenbauer and former parlor owner, Al Ehringer, who sold Hausenbauer the Main Street restaurant a few years ago. Their sale agreement featured a “no competition” clause that was set to run out in January 2004 and has been at the root of Hausenbauer’s complaints,.
Ehringer also leases the property where the omelet stand operates from the city. Ehringer rented the space to Gerson, which made Hausenbauer believe Ehringer was violating the no competition clause.
As part of the agreement, Gerson agreed not to compete with Hausenbauer through January 2004. However, the agreement allows Gerson to bring the omelet stand back to the market in six months.
As for the live music, about five neighbors who live near the market, complained to City Hall that the amplified music from the weekly bands disturbed them. City officials measured the volume from one man’s balcony at the Sea Colony across the street and realized the decibel level violated city code.
According to the market’s conditional use permit approved in 1997, music can’t be audible beyond the western point of the market, City Councilman Kevin McKeown said.
“I don’t know who wrote that because it’s virtually impossible to not have it audible,” he said. “So technically, the city was violating its own CUP and we cannot ask people to comply with their CUPs and not follow our own.”
So as a result, the farmers market will book acoustic musicians to lower the noise level.
“It limits the variety of music we can have,” said Main Street Farmers Market Coordinator Diana Rodgers.
Both McKeown and Rodgers were at the market the last Sunday in July, when those two issues, plus a few others, rose to the surface and upset many vendors and customers.
“It was a convergence of issues that came up,” Rodgers said. “The truth is there are a lot of differing opinions and everybody has an idea of how it should be run.”
Hausenbauer’s opinion, for one, is well known.
For more than two years he has lodged complaints at City Hall that the market creates unfair competition by having outdoor food vendors and allowing the event to grow so much that a lack of parking along Main Street has become a serious issue.
Hausenbauer claims City Hall violates much more than the noise level in its CUP, which doesn’t even define what the farmers market is. What’s more, Hausenbauer claims, City Hall has ignored his requests to address the issue or even respond to his complaints.
He argues that if a business owner applied to City Hall to hold a weekly event similar to Sunday’s farmers market, which attracts thousands of people, he would be denied based on traffic and parking issues alone.
“Any other CUP would have had to do a traffic study and that’s where they are in trouble,” he said. “It would never be approved the way it is.”
But McKeown, Rodgers and Main Street Merchants Association Executive Director Gary Gordon, all say the lack of parking was an issue long before the farmers market started because people park off of Main Street and walk to the beach.
3F5,“It’s an easy event to blame,” Rodgers said.
Hausenbauer points out that the city’s CUP describes the event as “pedestrian oriented,” yet the parking lots behind his restaurant are filled with market patrons. He added that he pays assessment fees to maintain those lots, yet his customers rarely can use them on Sundays.
“If people perceive a parking problem on Sunday, how does that trickle down the rest of the week?” Hausenbauer asked.
He also points to a section of the permit that states the event’s activities should not negatively affect surrounding properties. Hausenbauer argues that having non-agricultural food vendors cooking at the market is detrimental to his business.
Hausenbauer wants the market to go back to the way it was during its early days in the mid 1990s when it was mostly agricultural vendors selling produce. There was no outside food vendors, no live music, no pony rides and no competition for him. He claims he loses thousands of dollars each Sunday because of the farmers market.
39E,“Between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m., we have empty tables,” Hausenbauer said.
However, many people say there is a line outside his restaurant every Sunday.
Rodgers said between 65 and 70 percent of the market’s sales are from agricultural stands.
It appears Hausenbauer is alone in his complaints about the market.
Most Main Street merchants think the market helps their businesses because it attracts thousands of people to the area every week.
Gordon, who runs the association that represents Main Street, said a survey conducted in 2001 of 80 merchants shows that most felt the market was good for business. Others said it had a negative impact because of the lack of parking.
While the Main Street Merchant’s Association has not taken a position on Hausenbauer’s complaints, Gordon said he agrees that the city has created an event that has resulted in a lack of parking.
“I’ve always felt that was a valid complaint,” he said.
“It’s regrettable that he feels that the farmers market is detrimental,” said Mark Richter, the city’s economic development manager. “We disagree.”
Hausenbauer has received plenty of criticism from market supporters in the past. A war of misinformation started brewing more than a year ago when Omelette Parlor employees began wearing T-shirts saying “Keep the market green.” What followed was a flyer distributed anonymously throughout the market that gave the top 10 reasons not to eat at the Omelette Parlor.
And then two Sundays ago, the flyer blaming Hausenbauer for the omelet stand being closed ignited people’s tempers once again.
“There were a lot of raised hackles at what should be a fun event,” McKeown said. “It was designed to be a community event.
“There are kids, there is music, people are serving fresh food and people are pissed off. That’s not right.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 4, 2003. Read the original PDF.