SPECIAL ISSUE: Westside Food Scene | Delightful Bites Pages 9 – 16 S A N TA M O N I C A
INSIDE
Fire Erupts at Santa Monica’s Coogie’s Cafe
REFLECTING THE CONCERNS OF THE COMMUNITY smmirror.com
PAGE 3
April 12 – 18, 2019 Volume XXI, Issue 39
SM Passes Sidewalk Vending Ordinance Legalizes street food in certain areas. By Cailley Chella Elote, mango, churros and other street treats are about to be in high supply in Santa Monica. The city mostly prohibited sidewalk vending, until now. On Tuesday, April 9, the Santa Monica City Council unanimously voted to approve an emergency ordinance to immediately implement a sidewalk vending program that will create a legal pathway for vendors in spaces that were formerly restricted. Governor Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill 946 last year, decriminalizing street vending in public spaces across California. The bill, also known as the Safe Sidewalk Vending Act, left it up to local governments to decide what worked best for their area, and that is what the Santa Monica City Council feels they have done. The new program will prioritize public health and safety as well as expand economic opportunity for lawful, permitted vendors. Santa Monica Mayor Gleam Davis lauded the program Wednesday, saying she believes the law is fair for everyone. “Santa Monica’s approach to sidewalk vending strikes an important balance that we hope will create an inclusive, safe, and successful business environment for vendors and customers, ensure public safety, and allow our public spaces to be enjoyed by all,” Davis said in a statement released by the city.
VENDING, see page 18
TAX
3RD STREET PROMENADE UNDER TRANSITION
Promenade 3.0 and vacancies By Joe Fasbinder
One of the things you’ll notice when you come to the Santa Monica Promenade, like 14 to 17 million people do every year, is a change in the number of retailers. A negative change, at least in terms of big-name businesses. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Ask Kathleen Rawson, chief executive of Downtown Santa Monica. “The Third Street Promenade greets more than 14 million people on an annual basis -including a significant number of locals, employees and guests from all over the world. Overall the downtown area is bustling with a diverse array of restaurants, shopping, farmers markets and establishments that satisfy the day to day needs of our community such as
banking, medical offices and groceries. The Promenade has not seen any capital investment since 1989, so it is time to adjust to the changing dynamics of retail and reimagine our public space to suit the needs of the next generation.” Tourism in Santa Monica as a whole has been pretty steady over the past couple of years, despite changes in the national economy, soaring rates in apartment costs and changes in the way people do business. The Promenade hosts about 100 retail slots. Six of them are temporarily vacant. “It’s a transition,” said Orbell Ovaness, first vice president of CBRE, a high-end retail and grocery market marketing firm that counts the Promenade as one of its clients. Retail is far from dead on the Promenade, but crowds there are smaller in recent years. A lot of those people aren’t going to the outlets like the now-shuttered Barnes & Noble, the bookselling powerhouse that has fallen on
hard times, just like a lot of brick and mortar sales outlets, a factor in what has been happening along a broad scale across the United States. People just aren’t going out to shop. A lot of people still come to the Promenade for ambience: the talented street performers and the weekly farmers market, for example. “Creative marketing is what is going on at the Promenade,” Ovaness said. A lot of that involves retailers who are making a footprint for their sales with smaller stores and business people making use of creative office space, where businesses rent office space for short periods of time to use as a fashionable address which doesn’t entail renting an office for a long term. Ovaness has seen a boom in creative marketing space since about 2017. “The outlook is positive, now that the city is getting involved in revamping the street. They’re providing funds for infrastructure
PROMENADE, see page 18
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