The Process Of Approving The New Version Of The Ordinance Will Continue
By Dolores Quintana
The Los Angeles City Council’s Planning and Land Use Management Committee considered the revised Al Fresco Ordinance that restaurants and the residents of the city have indicated that they would like to make permanent on June 6, 2023. The original ordinance temporarily suspended certain zoning regulations and allowed restaurants to build outdoor dining areas or parklets and utilize sidewalks to encourage people to dine at their restaurants in the open air, which was considered safer.
In an emailed statement, Lien Ta, restauranteur and co-owner of Here’s Looking At You in Koreatown and Silverlake restaurants All Day Baby/Tet A Tet, talked about the issue after she attended the meeting in support of the ordinance, “The PLUM meeting went well — so it’s moving onto to the next step in approval. For the past three years, restaurants have had access to the Al Fresco Permit Program, which was a lifesaver for thousands of restaurants in LA when we were relegated to outdoor dining exclusively. Restaurants had to pour money into creating desirable patios. Now, the City is attempting to demand that these restaurants go backward and go through a permitting process to properly permit our outdoor spaces per old red tape regulations — this would take years of time and tens of thousands of dollars. so most restaurants, which don’t have deep pockets, will be forced to give up their patios. Moving forward, the hope is that it isn’t so difficult and expensive to open a restaurant in the first place. At IHC, it is our hope that we offer better solutions for the permitting process and better policy that helps small businesses thrive.”
The revised version of the ordinance, in summary, says, “The proposed Al Fresco Ordinance is a key component of Los Angeles’s economic strategy, geared toward propping up locally-sourced jobs in the hospitality industry which are recovering from the pandemic. City Planning’s Al Fresco Ordinance amends provisions of Los Angeles’s Zoning Code to facilitate outdoor dining on private property. Recognizing the success of the emergency outdoor dining authorizations, the proposed ordinance will simplify current Zoning Code regulations for restaurant owners who wish to offer outdoor dining in private property areas, including but not limited to parking lots, patios, and plazas. Specifically, this ordinance seeks to make permanent the temporary zoning relief measures for private property introduced during the pandemic that allowed restaurant operators to utilize their parking spaces to facilitate outdoor dining.” You can read more about the revised ordinance and find more information here.
