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City officials to discuss controversy at meeting; merchant not optimistic KENNETH SONG/NEWS-PRESS PHOTOSThis was the scene Saturday at a parklet at Jeannine’s Restaurant & Bakery on Coast Village Road in Montecito. Owner Alison Hardey said her business needs the outdoor seating.
City officials will hold a meeting Friday in Montecito to garner public input about the ongoing parklet/parking controversy there.
Brian Brunello, co-owner of The Liquor and Wine Grotto in Montecito, told the News-Press Tuesday that a representative of the city of Santa Barbara has been circulating a notice about the meeting, scheduled for 8:30-9:30 a.m. at Coast and Olive, “to solicit public input” from customers, retail business owners, landlords and restaurant owners.
“He came to us and was passing them out at other businesses,” Mr. Brunello said.
Mr. Brunello recently spearheaded a petition signed by 25 Montecito businesses and seven Montecito landlords urging the Santa Barbara City Council to remove the parklets along Coast Village Road and Coast Village Circle that popped up after the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020. Mr. Brunello contends their installation and use by some restaurants have drastically reduced the number of parking spaces available to his customers and other retailers in town.
He’s not optimistic that Friday’s meeting will have a happy ending.
“I’m sure there will be a lot of discussion and pitting neighbor against neighbor. but it’s not a ‘neighbor-against-neighbor’ issue. It’s a community issue” unlikely to be resolved at this point, he told the News-Press.
A no-stopping sign is posted Friday at Coast Village Road. The Santa Barbara Public Works Department has posted signage to improve parking safety.The reason, he said, is that some restaurants are making an “enormous” amount of extra money each month because of the added seating capacity made possible by the parklets. “It’s hard not to blame them because of the amount of money at stake,” he said.
“They can say there’s no problem and they care about their neighbors, but their actions speak otherwise. It’s common to anyone who’s paying attention.”
Mr. Brunello placed the blame for the current standoff squarely on the shoulders of the Santa Barbara City Council, particularly the lack of clear rules regarding parklet sizing, something he said should have been dealt with back in 2020.
“Shame on the city for not having clarity,” he said. “The restaurants are just going along with what they were told to do.”
Nevertheless, he said, some restaurateurs clearly got carried away with the amount of money to be made.
“For the owner of Jeannine’s (Restaurant & Bakery) to say her business was going to fail without the parklets is disingenuous, wrong and sad,” he said. “It’s just being greedy. Why have other restaurants survived without it? What more examples do you need? It shows you don’t need to profit at the expense of every other business out there.”
Alison Hardey, owner of Jeannine’s, confirmed her public comments to the News-Press, but noted that Mr. Brunello “is not unbiased. Let’s just put it that way.
“He doesn’t understand our industry,” Ms. Hardey said. “We depend on high volume. Without it, we can’t make it. He doesn’t need the volume, or understand how hard it is to run a restaurant. It’s almost impossible right now. The restaurant business is very expensive to run.”
Even though people are traveling again since pandemic restrictions were lifted, it’s “still pretty serious,” she said. “Nobody wants to be crammed inside,” especially older patrons.
Mr. Brunello noted, however, that staffers at some restaurants actually are instructed to park on city streets so a restaurant’s valet service can shuffle patrons’ cars in and out, adding to the lack of parking available for retail customers. He said he wouldn’t be able to park his own car in public parking, except that he arranged for the owner of a private lot to let him park there.
Ms. Hardey countered that restaurant staffers have to park wherever they can find a space, on the street, behind the street, etc. She said the lack of parking along Coast Village Road — and resulting congestion — existed long before COVID-19.
“The city does a great job for State Street but zero on Coast Village Road,” she said.
Unable to solve their parking problems, the petitioners finally reached out to city officials to resolve the issue.
“The public and people like ourselves finally got wise and decided to go back to the source, which is the Santa Barbara City Council,” Mr. Brunello said.
While considered part of Montecito, Coast Village Road falls within the Santa Barbara city limits.
Mr. Brunello doesn’t hold out much hope for any substantial changes even when the council’s ad hoc committee charged with coming up with an interim plan for dealing with the parklets reports back to the full council next month.
“Based on what I’ve seen and know, I have no confidence in them whatsoever,” he said. “It hasn’t been taken seriously. I don’t expect things to get done. I really don’t.”
Mr. Brunello said only one out of seven councilmembers, Mike Jordan, responded after Mr. Brunello emailed council members copies of the petition on July 29 at 9:07 a.m.
Mr. Brunello added that Councilmember Jordan’s answer was “vague.”
Mayor Randy Rowse and Councilmember Kristen Sneddon told the News-Press last week that they hadn’t seen the petition. Neither they nor the other city council members responded to a Tuesday email or phone call from the News-Press asking whether they had seen the petition since.
Just to be sure they receive the petition, Mr. Brunello dropped off hard copies Monday morning in their mailboxes at City Hall.
Mr. Brunello said the council should “be acutely aware of it,” given Sunday’s News-Press story on the parklets uproar and the hard copies that are now safely in members’ mailboxes at City Hall.
“If they haven’t seen it at this point, it’s their fault,” Mr. Brunello said.
He said he contacted Councilmember Sneddon by email after sending her the petition and set up two site visits for which she failed to show up. Nor did she cancel or postpone ahead of time, he said.
After her first no-show, he emailed her again, and her response was “Oh my gosh. I’m so sorry. How’s Friday sound?” He said it sounded good, but the result was the same.
“It cost me at that point” because he put on extra staffing to man his store while he waited, Mr. Brunello told the News-Press. “On top of that, I got the feeling they’re not taking this seriously.”
Councilmember Sneddon did not respond to an email for comment on his allegation.
But in an earlier email response, she told the News-Press that something will be done to resolve the parklet issue.
“In general I would add that the parklets on Coast Village Road seemed to have fulfilled their purpose during the height of the pandemic to give expanded outdoor dining options, which can now be scaled back to increase parking capacity and sightlines to businesses in this unique area,” she said.
email: nhartstein@newspress.com
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