Hermosa Beach Extends Outdoor Dining

HERMOSA BEACH, CA — Hermosa Beach City Council voted Tuesday night to extend the city's temporary outdoor dining and retail program and its lane reconfiguration program to May 31, 2022.

"These temporary programs helped our businesses survive and kept our residents and visitors safe during the pandemic restrictions," Hermosa Beach Mayor Mike Detoy said.

"These projects also created a more walkable, bike-able and welcoming Downtown," Detoy said. "Our action Tuesday ensures that we will fully assess the impacts of the expanded outdoor operations for our local businesses and the lane configuration program on the City's traffic, parking and budget before determining whether to make these programs permanent and, if we do make them permanent, what other changes are needed to improve the programs."

Santa Monica has also opted to continue its outdoor dining program, waiving fees for temporary use permits for outdoor dining and retail activations, including sidewalk dining, parklets, and the Promenade satellite through June 2022.

The city has issued more than 60 permits for outdoor dining and retail operations since the council approved the temporary permitting program in June 2020 — at the height of the pandemic. Those permits allowed businesses to expand their operations onto their parking lots and public property, including Pier Plaza and existing parking spaces on Downtown streets.

While the city had previously required businesses to pay encroachment fees when their operations expanded onto public spaces like Pier Plaza, it waived those fees during the pandemic and allowed businesses to expand into other sidewalk areas and public parking spaces for the first time.

The city plans to study in more detail what future potential rates to charge businesses that are operating in public spaces will be.

The study will also review the lane reconfiguration program on the downtown portions of Hermosa and Pier Avenues, which the council approved in July 2020 to accommodate the construction of dining decks on those two streets. The lane reconfiguration program removed one lane of traffic in each direction on the downtown portions of Hermosa and Pier Avenues. It also added bicycle lanes to those sections of the streets, nine new Americans with Disability Act (ADA) accessible parking spaces, signage and pavement markings.

In Manhattan Beach, the city opted to end its outdoor dining program, which was created to help businesses continue operating and have risen to popularity in the pandemic.

The program had been extended three times since June 2020 and will now end by Jan. 3.

Restaurant and cafe owners are expected to remove the dining deck areas — and some business owners and residents were surprised by the city's decision.

City officials cited increased traffic downtown, trash, inability to clean streets and sidewalks, interruptions with access under the Americans with Disabilities Act, reduced parking, narrow driving area, noise and risky pedestrian safety as among reasons for ending the program.

"The city will begin the process to consider outdoor dining on public property in Manhattan Beach and explore options to include the program as part of the city's character," according to the city.