Edhat Staff
By the edhat staff
The Santa Barbara City Council voted in favor of compliance with the American Disabilities Act (ADA) for six restaurants with outdoor dining violations.
The eateries were tagged for violating the City of Santa Barbara’s outdoor dining rules and ADA access prompting separate appeals sent to the City Council.
After multiple warnings spanning several months, the following businesses had their parklet permits revoked: Ca’Dario Restaurant (37 E. Victoria Street), Courthouse Tavern (129 E. Anapamu Street), Folded Hills Winery (1294 Coast Village Road), Foxtail Kitchen & Bar (14 E. Cota St), Taza (413 State Street), and Trattoria Vittoria (30 E. Victoria Street).
According to staff reports, the businesses were ordered to remove the parklets by April 24, 2023 after receiving four notices.
During Tuesday’s meeting, the Council reviewed each restaurant’s appeal separately and voted for all parklets to be removed. The votes were unanimous except in the cases of Trattoria Vittoria and Taza.
Mayor Randy Rowse said city inspectors did their job when reviewing outdoor dining structures. “It’s something we were sworn to uphold. ADA is the law,” said Rowse.
The six restaurants will be required to dismantle and remove their parklets before reapplying for a new permit.
The Folded Hills Winery parklet near the roundabout construction on Coast Village Road has already been removed.
Last month the City Council approved a $2 per square-foot fee for all outdoor dining structures within the State Street Promenade. The new fees kicked in on May 1.
I’m curious as to what the specific violations were. Not enough space to accommodate wheelchairs? Steps, or uneven flooring?
Good riddance to the Cadario parklett.
Last time I was there they took about an hour to take our orders on a mellow afternoon and forst served the family with a screaming child that came in after us.
Good. Would’ve been a huge ADA lawsuit against the City waiting to happen.
The Mayor says “It’s something we were sworn to uphold”. Why does the Community Development Department do their job for these “parklets” , but then allow other businesses to violate basic zoning laws, which the former City Attorney admitted to? Is this politics, or something else?
Good riddance to all of it.
Meanwhile across from EOS & multiple State street locations, the food pirate cartel comes up from LA and illegally sells hot dogs being cooked on top of rusty tool chests. But hey the city screws over our local businesses & lets these flight by night guys keep running amok. Where are your priorities SB city council? You should be ashamed. Local businesses make more money, pay more taxes to the city, it’s good for the city, but they can’t make more money if they have less space to operate. Yes anyone from Timbuktu can come sell street meat with no consequences. It’s time to pull your heads out of your you know what and start acting like a city council that is for this city.
Can someone say what exactly was the violation? Strange article.
10:03 PM, They didn’t comply with the ADA (handicap access) building codes. CA building codes have an immense amount of requirements to comply with the federal and state handicap access.
It is stated in the article. The parklets were not compliant with ADA laws, they did not fix them in the time required, and now will need to be removed.
Good!
Make the dining setups temporary – move them in and out over the week-end.
Open State St. Monday AM to Friday afternoon.
Feels like a good time to mention that language is important in these conversations. Terms like “differently abled,” and “handicapped” would be better replaced with “disabled” and “accessible” (when talking about parking spaces, designated entrances, etc). Not really the point of the article but just a friendly reminder anyway : )
The preferred terminology changes periodically, and some are just dopey or condescending. Personally, I’d rather be handicapped than disabled, but “disabled” is in vogue.
I feel quite certain that handicapped patrons could have been accommodated INSIDE these restaurants, like always. This is another example of the City making it harder to do business here, unless you are marijuana growers or sellers of course.
My understanding is that if non-disabled persons can eat in a parklet, the parklet must also be accessible for disabled persons. Exceptions are allowed for structures that cannot be reasonably constructed or adapted (such as historical buildings), but since the parklets are nearly new, they must be built to ADA standards. One wonders why these weren’t.
AHCHOOO as one who has a family member permanently in a wheelchair, that is exactly correct. They have the same right to eat outdoors as does the non-disabled person. I am always surprised that others can’t understand this. Everyone should try to go downtown with a person in a wheelchair and it is an eye opener on how difficult that can be. I am glad the city is not allowing these 6 parklets to slide on this requirement.
There are many “Parklets” that are well designed and I’m glad they have been allowed to remain… But the rickety, bare wood, slivery, unsafe ones like the one on E Cota St (with the cars whizzing by inches from them) should definitely not be allowed to be there at all. Thank you City Council for your efforts to try to find a happy medium for what is a complicated situation.
I wonder why these things are named “parklets.” “Park less” or “No Parklets” would be more accurate.
They should be called street patios or streetios. I agree, they aren’t parks, and they block former parking places, so parklets makes no sense.
The mayor declares, “It’s something we were sworn to uphold. ADA is the law.”
Has anyone noticed the nightly pop-up restaurant that’s been clogging the sidewalk outside the liquor store at San Pascual & Mission lately? What about the others like it along the Milpas sidewalks? Does anyone have information on the legality of these operations and whether or not The City is aware of them and if they’re enforcing the laws “…we were sworn to uphold” on them?
I believe that liquor store was once “The Home of Killer Chicken.” Their Thai fried chicken encrypted with peanut crumbles was reeeeeeally good. Maybe the new pop-up place is just as good.
Yes, the absurd use of the new Paseo built at Mission and San Pascual is worse that what was happening before. I assume the small market there is condoning or even running this. I am frequently stunned by the tolerance shown for such usurpation of community space and the excuse that it has to do with the needs of the people doing this as though their needs outweigh everyone else’s. Of course the idea of the Paseo was that it would be used by bicyclists. A total fantasy from the start, so might as well let a small mart setup in the unused space!?
I heard there is a new California state law that allows street venders to do as they please with no registration/regulations. I have seen pop up food vendors all over town, don’t really care but some are on public sidewalks and on the streets. Does anyone know the legality of any of this ? Or can we all just go bonkers with our own food carts all over the town ?
How many “differently enabled” people would be concerned? If the (reasonable) law not to exclude them from reasonable access to places is to be applied to places, will there need to be ramps or elevators on all mountains and hard surface paths over all beach sand and into the water until about 8′ to allow equal access to the ocean?
The ADA does not require that the wilderness be tamed, but built environments must be built to certain specifications. . The beach, or the top of Half Dome in Yosemite, do not need to be made accessible because that is absurd and unreasonable. But you will find that there are paved walkways at/near many beaches that do accommodate baby strollers, wheelchairs, people who cannot walk on sand, etc. And most buildings can be made accessible, though some older ones still are allowed to have ramps in the back (rather than the main entrance) because that is considered reasonable in some cases..
i’ll be happy when all of them are gone. this is way out of hand. it was only intended for the pandemic. these businesses operated just fine for many years with out these pieces of junk on the sidewalk and street. $2 a sq ft is stupid. They are renting out public space. I’d like to see the legalities of this. Whats more annoying is having to navigate past annoyed waiters on the damned sidewalk when my kids and I are simply walking. Had a guy at one express his pure annoyance that we were walking on the side walk and “got in his way” as he was walking to a table. FFS, it’s a public side walk, NOT part of your diner. The dude rolls his eyes and walks off. Way over this stupidity