Bars and restaurants aren’t blight
Dear Editor:
I could not agree more with Kathleen Mckaveney of Pacific Drapery in North Park (North Park News, February 2010). She makes sense, which is more than I can say about some of the other vociferous personalities prattling their overblown sense of importance in the form of biased opinions and absurd accusations surrounding the topic of liquor licenses in North Park.
I applaud Kathleen for being a voice of reason amidst so much unwarranted panic over the presence of several small bars and restaurants in North Park. These bars and restaurants mark the advent of gentrification and an overall improvement in the quality of life in the community, not “blight” as so many protestors like to say. “No more bars!” they say. “More retail, more shops!” they cry. Well how, pray tell, do these protesters expect retailers to make a dime if there is no economic micro-climate to buttress their efforts. Small businesses, small retail in particular, are fragile business with very little “fat” to sustain them in tough economic times. Without clientele, these businesses go under overnight. However, neighboring bars and restaurants do provide exactly the economic micro-climate needed to draw customers into the small shops nearby. Bottom line, you can’t have one without the other. Shopping and dining are symbiotically related and cannot be divorced without consequences to one or the other.
I’ve been to the bars and restaurants identified as being “a blight” and I think they are all awesome additions to the neighborhood. They’re clean, respectable and diverse in their clientele. They serve good food, fresh and fast, and they have pleasant wait staff. Their presence is as much of “a blight” on North Park as say, the presence of the lublic library or the post office.
What truly seems to irk the naysayers most is the perceived loss, real or imagined, of their sacred parking spots in front of their homes. I live two blocks south of University Ave myself and while I too, grumble under my breath when someone parks in front of my house, I keep that feeling to myself and park in my driveway. Enough said. Fact of the matter, parking is far from being a rare commodity in North Park, no matter how morbidly the protesters want to portray the situation. Falsely labeling small businesses as “Big Box Bar/Clubs” and falsely accusing their owners of encouraging debauchery is ultimately not going to stop the spread of economic progress and urban development. Our cities (San Diego included) will only become more dense as time goes on and if these individuals have a problem with that, then they should move to Alpine or the Imperial Valley. I hear they have a lot of parking spots out there…
Monica Marusceac
North Park
Monica
Where to begin?
1. I suggest that you visit The Bluefoot at Upas & 30th some weekend night after 11 PM and or speak to your “neighbors” that live nearby and are fed up up all the noise and problems cause by that “small business”. It’s not just 30th & Univ. that has been frustrating residents for years…
2. RE: your statement, “vociferous personalities prattling their overblown sense of importance in the form of biased opinions and absurd accusations”, again I suggest that you “get a grip” and talk to the neighbors that are having problems, instead of calling them names and trying (unsuccessfully) to make the folks that are trying to protect their neighborhood from Business’s Blight seem unrealistic!
3. If these bars are not causing problems, then perhaps you can explain why the SDPD has also recommended that no new big bar clubs open in North Park… maybe they also have “vociferous personalities”…
4. a. RE: “Scared Parking”, again, many folks here do not have driveways to use and most Condo’s in our neighborhood were not designed to provide enough parking thanks to lax parking regulations in the late 90′s, requirements that our current Planning group continues to wave all too often.
b. Another BLIGHT that continue to affect those that live in NP’s Residential Improvement Districts (RID’s) is that our streets are packed by Business related parking both during the day and also now at night, often until 2 or 3 AM when noisy patrons of these “small businesses” stumble toward their cars leaving bottle and cans in their wake. I don’t know about you but I do not condone driving drunk!
c. Here is another perfect example: Where are the expected 4,000 to 6,000 Indie Festival folks
going to park for the two (2) day festival? Their website says: “lots of free street parking”
What concessions have the Indie Festival promoters made to make up for their Parking Blight? Are they offering NP residents a free ticket (which would cost them nothing) or doing anything except making BIG money, oh and giving some of their profits to NPMS, how $pecial, for them…
5. Want a great local model for a great neighborhood, take a look at Little Italy! Clean, safe, NO BIG Bars/Clubs and lots of successful “small businesses”…
BTW: That is exactly why NP-RID was formed, to promote and insure that a Residential Friendly environment will always be part of “our” North Park. That is what the Improvement stands for in RID.
If you love “the spread of economic progress and urban development” perhaps it’s you that should think about moving, I’d suggest you try PB, as they are the only place in San Diego that has more Clubs, Liquor licenses and crime than “our” North Park… and that’s a fact!
Upon Refection and An Update:
URBN owner Jon Mangini said he is “solely interested in operating a restaurant at the location, although he hopes his license will allow URBN to remain open until 2 a.m.” Does he really think anyone buys this? Too bad ABC allows this kind of hypocrisy by letting a “bona fide” restaurant stay open until 2am (restaurant license dinner serving hours are 6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.)
“I think we’re giving the neighborhood a great place,” he said. “It’s really going to clean up that corner that’s been vacant for so long. We want to be a bar, but more than that we want to be a restaurant, and I just can’t see a restaurant hurting the neighborhood. We want to be a bar, no, a restaurant, no, a bar, no, a restaurant … the community might have a small problem with trusting this guy and “it’s going to clean up that corner”??…sure, vomiting drunks that do not make it to the alley are sure to add a special ambiance to any neighborhood…
Hill said “ABC limits licenses based on residential population by census tract.” The University Avenue and 30th Street area is on the boundary of census tracts 13 and 14, which stretch from El Cajon Boulevard south to Upas Street and from Arizona Street east to Ray Street. The SDPD calls the Univ. Ave 30th St the “4 Corners” because 4 census tracts come together there, which is part of NP’s problem of depending upon current zoning regulations; something new being talked about is an “Overlay Zone” that might allow more City input and control over what is allowed in the future…
Tract 13 is allowed seven (7) on-sale licenses – permits that allow businesses to serve alcohol – but 21 have been granted. Tract 14 is allowed four (4) on-sale licenses, yet 20 were granted. Hill said ABC allows for these exceptions based on “public convenience or necessity,” which the police department determines for bars and clubs, and ABC decides for restaurants. Just two sentences ago Hill said “ABC limits licenses based on residential population by census tract”…Okay, tis it one or the other or both or what?. The ABC has it’s own rules, it’s own regulations to follow and it’s own Judges…
“We already have a residential organization here and it exists to work primarily on residents’ quality of life issues, so the development of a new organization I’m quite frankly confused about,” Studebaker said. “The last thing we need is one more group when we have all the community infrastructure in place. It just needs to be utilized appropriately.” Well where were they while those extra 8 extra licenses went into Tract 13 and the 6 extra licenses went into Tract 14? Seems like NP-RID it’s not the last thing NP needs, NP-RID is the first thing NP needs now!.
From an economic perspective, a lot of people still see North Park as a good place to invest because it’s not oversaturated.” Not oversaturated? I guess she must be referring to people, because it has been established in this article that it is oversaturated with Liquor licenses!
“The meeting is going to be scheduled to educate the community on the statutes and policies of the ABC licensing and enforcement processes,” she said. “It is to inform them and to open communication for their concerns concerning ABC licenses in general.” On 3/23/10 a NP-RID group familiar with ABC issues met with Ms. Hill and 2 others from the SDPD to discuss NP’s current ABC situation. The 90 minute meeting was informative and was the first step toward another larger NP-RID hosted community meeting where the general public unfamiliar with the ABC can learn “ABC 101″ so folks can become educated about what the ABC does and does not do, plus how they deal:
– with over concentration (basically there is no limit to the number of licenses they can grant).
– with bad operators and how long that process takes.
– with complaints and exactly what forms must be filled out before the ABC will consider the “incident” as a valid complaint!
(without the proper form, there is “NO” complaint.