Parklets in front of Belmont Shore restaurants will have their hearing at next week’s City Council meeting.
When the City Council voted on Sept. 14 to allow temporary parklets to stay in place until the end of June, Councilwoman Suzie Price added a caveat that the Belmont Shore parklets would receive a separate review after a study and community meeting. Price’s Third District includes the business corridor on Second Street.
Price’s public Zoom meeting took place Oct. 21. There was a generic public survey about parklets citywide, where residents could add comments about specific areas, but no Belmont Shore-specific public survey.
The city’s Traffic Engineering Bureau, however, did conduct an in-depth study on Second Street and the side streets in Belmont Shore.
Parklets were introduced last year after the state, county and city banned indoor dining in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Using temporary barriers, parking spaces in front of restaurants were converted to outdoor seating. The Long Beach Restaurant Association and multiple owners have said the added seating saved many businesses, and some are lobbying to allow parklets to remain permanently.
But Ricardo Light, a city traffic planner, said in an email that all the current parklets are temporary, and any permanent or semi-permanent parklet would face more stringent planning and design regulations, along with another permitting process.
“As a reminder, the existing temporary parklets are not approved or designed to be permanent,” Light wrote in an email given to the Southern California News Group by a Belmont Shore resident. “The ‘semi-permanent’ parklet permit – which predates COVID-19 – is managed and permitted separately from the temporary parklet program.”
Belmont Shore is considered a special case because of the number of restaurants on the comparatively narrow Second Street, as well as a chronic lack of parking. Residences also come up to the alley behind the businesses on both sides of Second Street, and parking in front of homes is impacted by customers and employees.
There currently are 26 parklet locations in the Shore, Light said, with some locations having two connected parklets. There also are four parklets shared by two or more businesses.
Since the return of indoor dining and retail shopping, five parklets have been removed. Five business operators, Light said, have expressed interest in removing or reducing their parklet space prior to the temporary parklet program end date. A Notice of Removal will be posted this week at Archibald’s, which is currently closed, and the owner has not responded to city requests for discussion about the parklet there.
The agenda for the City Council meeting on Tuesday, Dec. 7, had not been posted by deadline for this story. Council agendas are typically posted the Thursday or Friday before a meeting.
“I don’t know what the exact recommendations are going to be,” Price wrote in an email, “so I can’t comment on it.”
The council meeting will start at 5 p.m. in council chambers at City Hall. It will also be streamed live on the city’s website and televised by LBTV3.com.
