Parklet Update at City Council 

At a late meeting on Tuesday, Santa Barbara City Council voted to approve a new program regulating parklets within City limits, with the exception of Coast Village Road in Montecito. 

City staff was given guidance to draft an ordinance regulating parklets in terms of location constraints (red curbs, blue curbs, stormwater drains, utilities, distance from driveways and street corners), safety, accessibility, egress, plumbing fixture count, parking requirements, and stormwater management, as well as licensing procedures.

Multiple councilmembers voiced support of removing Coast Village Road from the discussion, after Trey Pinner, president of the interim board of the Coast Village Association, asked the Council to not impose a “one size fits all” approach to the parklets on Coast Village Road. “It’s not about whether you like outside dining or not. It’s more about aesthetics, safety, and equity of use of the public right of way,” Pinner said. “Continuation of the parklets is not the best approach for our area,” he added, speaking on behalf of the CVA Board of Directors. 

According to City staff, there are 40 parklets in the City of Santa Barbara, including Coast Village Road, and there have been four recorded accidents of vehicles hitting the parklets, including one that was destroyed over the weekend on W. Anapamu Street. Councilmembers agreed that safety is the number one concern, and a streamlined process for parklet approval is overdue. 

Rob Miller, interim vice president of the Coast Village Association, told us following the meeting that the decision to remove Coast Village Road from the new guidelines does not necessarily mean an end to outdoor dining on Coast Village Road: instead, the CVA is hoping to draft its own outdoor dining ordinance for the road, taking in the unique layout of the street. “We intend on meeting with restaurant owners in the coming weeks to discuss a path forward,” Miller said. “We are very much in favor of outdoor dining. We felt that the City’s one-size-fits-all solution for parklets is not appropriate for Coast Village Road. We don’t have a parking structure to offset the parking loss, and we want to do what’s right for the entire district. There are other businesses on Coast Village Road other than restaurants.”

The allowance for businesses to expand temporarily outdoors was a critical response to keeping eateries operational during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the extension to continue to allow businesses to operate expanded outdoor facilities was to help ensure their continued success. More than 200 businesses in Santa Barbara and Montecito benefited from expanding the business areas outdoors, building parklets to allow for outdoor dining.