The Laguna-New York City Synchronicity
By Michael Ray
During the lockdown, New York City tried an experiment. It built multiple scores of pedestrian “promenades” created by closing traffic lanes, widening sidewalks, finding open spots in street medians, and otherwise finding outdoor, and therefore safe, spaces for its residents to enjoy.
They did not just enjoy it. They loved it. Now, NYC is making most of them permanent. Some people believe closing traffic lanes will make traffic jams more common. Others, citing remote working habits, the increase in Uber/Lyft transportation (fewer total cars on the road), and other changes in car-transport behavior, cite the opposite, with a true change in thinking: it is time to make pedestrians supreme again, not cars.
In Laguna, the City experimented with the Forest Avenue Promenade, which is an unmitigated success. It reinvigorated downtown and attracted tourists who otherwise would have skipped Laguna retail spending opportunities. Even the businesses that opposed the promenade, thinking the closed parking spaces would hurt their trade, have praised the promenade because it helps their businesses.
Now our City Council has voted to approve a consultant’s bid to design a permanent promenade.
Village Laguna had opposed the promenade for decades, well before COVID-19. They cite its cost (even while still defending their granted request from the City for a $500,000+ gift to buy its private garden in south Laguna). They say the loss of parking will create even more of a traffic logjam. They say it will draw more tourist hordes.
Personally, I do not get it. Village Laguna is supposed to be a friendly supporter of the people in Laguna. Why oppose the most popular new city initiative in decades? What is their real motive? Village Laguna, please answer that question, and do not make an argument based on the cost. In a city with a $100 million annual budget, the cost of that promenade, at about $2 million, is peanuts. Besides, Laguna is receiving about $4.3 million from the federal COVID-19 relief bills to spend any way it wants.
Then there is outside dining. One New York Times writer stated he happened upon a colleague eating outdoors at the famous Gramercy Tavern, and… “We made plans to eat together soon…. then [the friend] gestured down the street toward all the [restaurant] terraces built on the pavement, and at the shrubs and flowers and tall blazing patio heaters, and said, ‘This block is better than anything in Paris.’”
Then he describes the people watching from the new outdoor seating. They love it. They love the colors, the clothes people chose to exhibit themselves, the preening: “You’ll see a greater range of footwear, fabrics, and fashion in 10 minutes outside [any great restaurant] then you will see the entire night in its exclusive private back rooms.”
In short, people love to see people, and outside dining has taken off across the entire United States. If that is one consolation of the pandemic, it was making American restaurants more like European restaurants, more enjoyable, a community experience.
In Laguna Beach, we too joined the outdoor dining movement and again, the locals love it. They love people watching, all of it—just like the people in New York City.
Village Laguna opposes outside dining too. Why? I do not know. Ask them.
Why my friends at Village Laguna? Why do you oppose such locally popular changes? Please explain yourself. Replies to this column are most welcome. Let us have this important dialogue.
Michael is co-founder of Orange County School of the Arts and The Discovery Cube.
“Personally, I don’t get it.” – Michael Ray. Well maybe this will help.
Village Laguna seems to see Laguna Beach as a charming small town home for residents, not a business opportunity ripe for overtourism pickings and Disneyfication overdevelopment. As you’re a developer, I can fully understand how you view things very differently.
While there is no doubt the promenade can be a local’s attraction, the fact is, it was developed to attract more tourists and gin up sales for restaurants and downtown businesses. A fact everyone knows.
As for the promenade being an unmitigated success – please prove it. Let’s see sales numbers that justify that claim. There are none.
The promenade’s degree of popularity has yet to be fully proven. It’d be nice if residents were surveyed by a fully independent survey company to gauge actual resident taxpayer sentiment instead of just taking someone’s word for it.
I know of three businesses that closed on Forest Ave. after the promenade opened, so I wouldn’t be calling it a total knock-out success.
But back to the issue at hand – it seems like every week you’re trying to make Village Laguna the boogieman punching bag for everything wrong with this town since the bubonic plague. Please give it a rest. If it wasn’t for Village Laguna there wouldn’t be the charm there is that first attracted residents to this town. (What does Village Laguna have against the promenade? More appropriately, what do you and other pro-development/pro-business Liberate Laguna members have against residents who want a small, charming, peaceful, beach town lifestyle?)
I’d speculate no one is opposed to outdoor dining, but I know there are many who are opposed to glutting the town with more tourists and traffic and giving businesses public space for free while further diminishing prized parking space – all at taxpayer expense and residents’ inconvenience.
And I sincerely have to question the motives of you and your fellow pro-development members of Liberate Laguna who’ve contributed over $200,000 in the past two elections to support the election of pro-development/pro-business City Council members. I find it hard to believe this has been done out of the kindness of your pro-development hearts for Laguna residents.
Indeed, there’s a lot more baggage that went into the development of the promenade than just a nice place to park yourself. Such as how pro-development/pro-business City officials prepared the plans for the promenade in secret, blindsided the public by springing the plan for the first time at a City Council meeting and then getting it advanced without any public notification, in-put, discussion or review – all in just one meeting. Transparency be damned. Resident involvement: zero.
Hopefully this clarifies things better for you. And just for the record, I don’t belong to Village Laguna or any other organization in Laguna.
Great comment by J. Pudwill! A reasonable cost for a parking space in Laguna Beach is between $80,000 to $100,000 if one includes the cost of land (and there is precious little land available), the design, permitting process and the construction. So the four restaurants that will benefit and at the expense of others that are not so fortunate to get their own exclusive area in the promenade are very happy for this giveaway of $3.68 million to $4 million dollars. Additionally each parking space in that prime area was probably generating a minimum of $10,000 dollars annually for a revenue loss of $460,000 per year. If the city is going to subside select businesses at the residents expense why not be honest with those that pay the major share of these giveaways, i.e. the residents. But that’s not the way crony capitalism works. And then we have Mr. Ray, the Liberate Laguna “sky is falling if we developers don’t get our way” town crier with his weekly “musings” tell us that those who have kept Laguna Beach from becoming a Dana Point are somehow the real culprits for all his perceived ills. Mr. Ray your (Liberate Laguna) well orchestrated and well funded plan to make this little island just like any other cookie cutter tourist destination hopefully will continue to be rejected by those who value the quality of life that we have. The residents, lacking weekly forum and almost unlimited funds of the Liberate Laguna adherents, must unite to assure smart development that enhances our character and not those large money-making projects that apparently are the megadevelopers’ dreams. Help may be on the way.
Apt comments and questions, Mr. Pudwill and Mr. Catsimanes. I’m still giggling from a local developer’s comment that “it’s criminal that Laguna’s population hasn’t increased” at the Tuesday, June 1 City Council meeting. If an increasing population count is the measure of a successful city, then New Delhi and Calcutta must rank at the top for vibrancy ;-).