One of the key planks in Larry Nokes’ campaign platform reads: “Continue to add Outdoor Dining and Pedestrian-Friendly Malls”
While on the surface the idea of more outdoor dining and pedestrian-friendly “malls” may sound nice, the question is: What would this mean for Laguna’s residents?
Larry’s platform wants to intensify the use of our commercial areas to attract more visitors to Laguna. It apparently assumes that the best way to do that is to increase our dining facilities. It doesn’t use the words “I want more visitors.” But the platform’s approach to addressing brick and mortar retail problems is to promote more “experiential” retail, by which it means more bars and more restaurants which would replace existing merchants, many of whom are resident-serving.
There are several problems with this.
First: The City’s “Retail Market Evaluation” concluded there are already more restaurants than the demand warrants. Existing Laguna restaurants are highly dependent on day-trippers, who account for 73% of all dining sales.
Restaurants’ main profit is from alcohol sales. Laguna already has far more liquor licenses (over 100) and drunk driving arrests (DUIs) per capita than any other city in our region. DUIs increased dramatically from 324 in 2017 to 549 in 2019. With the public safety costs and risks related to alcohol, more restaurants and more visitor drinking and driving are not a benefit to our community.
More outdoor dining and street closures take away existing parking. Almost 75% of Laguna residents have identified traffic congestion as the most significant problem in Laguna and lack of parking is a main contributor. The parking structures Larry’s platform suggests would be paid for primarily by Laguna’s residents, but mainly benefit commercial landlords. Even with costly parking structures, the increased parking demand will add to pressure on neighboring residential streets.
The revenue the city collects from the sales tax on food and beverages covers only a fraction of the cost it incurs providing services to visitors. Clearly Laguna’s residents subsidize the visitors by more than $20 million per year. Your taxes are used to attract visitors and then to pay for their use of our facilities.
Creating more dining opportunities also creates more problems. Look behind the curtain to see the real agenda of Larry Nokes’ real estate developer and commercial landlord-backed platform and the implications its elements will have for Laguna’s residents.
Ping Lee, Laguna Beach
