Oceanside OKs New Beach Restrooms, Won't Ban Smoking on Restaurant Patios

The Oceanside City Council will not ban smoking on patios in restaurants and drinking establishments as it previously had indicated. 

But it will build and renovate restrooms, costing as much as $3 million, at the beach.

Council members made both decisions - in entirely different manners - at their meeting Wednesday evening. 

They didn't even vote on the proposed smoking ban because no one made a motion.

At an emotional meeting June 5 – Mayor Jim Wood walked out of the meeting – the three-member council majority had tweaked the no-smoking proposal as then written.

Originally, it would have banned smoking in all unenclosed areas and within 25 feet.

The conservative council majority, worried about infringing upon individual rights, wanted the ban to affect only patios on public, not private, property and wanted the restriction shortened to within 10 feet of the establishment.

On Wednesday, restaurant and bar owners argued that plan gave competitors with an upper deck, like Cabo Grill and those at the harbor, an unfair advantage.

Councilman Jack Feller worried the proposal was a step “on the road to socialism.”

In the end, no one put the proposal up for a vote, so it died without any specific action being taken. Councilwoman Esther Sanchez, former proponent of a total ban, was absent.

Earlier, with a vote of three in favor and one abstention – Wood – the council approved spending some of the $5.6 million expected from the sale of the city-owned Laguna Vista mobile-home park on the restrooms.

Councilman Jerry Kern proposed construction of four beach restrooms – at Sportfisher Drive, Tyson Street, Breakwater Way and the pier amphitheater  – and renovation of the restrooms at Wisconsin Street.

Leslee Gaul, chief executive officer of Visit Oceanside, said beach tourists spend an average of $120 a day if they stay overnight or $68 if they are day visitors.

“It does have an economic impact,” she said of beach-area tourism.

Kern said not everyone goes to a restaurant or to the end of the pier on a visit to the beach, but most everyone needs to use a bathroom.

Roseanne Kiss, chairman of the board of MainStreet Oceanside, said the group voted Tuesday to support the restroom proposal. “They're in a very sad state,” she said of the toilets, with many at least two decades old and not built to handle current beach crowds.

John Daley, a lifelong Oceanside resident, said he has watched the restrooms “becomes less and less desirable.”

“It's no question we have reached the point of doing something really nice,” Daley said.

Jim Schroder, chairman of the city's Economic Development Commission, said improving the bathrooms would help bring back the old motto: “Take Pride in Oceanside.”

City Manager Peter Weiss said building a new bathroom at the pier amphitheater will be a little trickier because the facility is deemed a historical structure and can't be demolished without a more-difficult process.

“I learn something new every day,” Councilman Gary Felien said. “Please explain how an old restroom is historical and protected from demolition.”

Weiss indicated the age of the amphitheater itself is a factor in the determination.

He estimated the restrooms would cost $1.2 million without the amphitheater, which would add another $1.5 million to $1.7 million to the total. 

“I think this is a great idea,” Wood said, but “I want to support the people of Oceanside and not visitors.”  He said the money would be better spent on improving railroad crossings in the city, so there could be a “quiet zone” with no train horns.

Wood said he “probably gets more complaints about train noise than anything else.”