Irate Residents Give City Food for Thought on Restaurant Plan

Mitzi Morton of Seal Beach learned about the plans for the new pier restaurant when someone called her Monday afternoon.

She said she, in turn, passed the news on with a call to one of her neighbors. Who called another friend. Who did the same. You get the idea.

That, Morton said, was how news spread through the beach community on Monday that a proposal for a restaurant at the tip of the rebuilt pier--ravaged during storms in 1983--was on the agenda for that night’s City Council meeting.

The problem, she and other residents said, was that the matter was on the consent calender, a laundry list of items routinely approved by the City Council without discussion.

Without discussion? Some like Morton--who sold “Save Our Pier” T-shirts, collected spare change in pickle jars, staged a charity run and raised $140,000 toward reconstruction costs--wanted to discuss the plan very much, thank you.

By midnight Monday, many of the residents who attended the regularly scheduled council meeting literally were screaming.

There had been no public hearing, they said, no announcement of ongoing discussions with Seattle developer Hal Griffith of HEG Enterprises, who three months ago proposed the upscale, two-story seafood restaurant with a bar to city officials.

“It’s reprehensible,” hollered Roger West at the five council members. West was one of the citizens who waited a couple of hours to address the council.

Referring to the extensive list of proposed dishes that Griffith ticked off for the council, West added: “You stand here and you’re talking about the menu with this guy.”

Said Morton: “When you put something on a consent calendar you’re ready to take action on it. . . . This should have been put to the people of Seal Beach long before this.”

City officials in interviews Tuesday denied any secrecy about the restaurant issue--a proposed lease agreement between Griffith and the city. They said the matter was put on the consent calendar because lease agreements are routinely placed there. By law, they added, a public hearing is not required to approve the lease, and they characterized the outcry as overreaction.

“There was no way we felt that the City Council was going to go in there (to the meeting) and adopt this agreement carte blanche,” said Assistant City Manager Daniel P. Joseph, who negotiated the proposed 40-year lease with Griffith. “We knew they were going to go over it with a fine-tooth comb.”

City administrators knew “full well we were going to pull this item off for discussion, as did most of the council, so it was no surprise to us,” said Councilman Victor Grgas, whose district includes the 77-year-old wooden pier and downtown.

“It was a surprise to have the people of the community accuse us of trying to jam something down their throats,” Grgas said. “Believe me, the restaurant has been an issue since it fell down. . . . Every opportunity has been used to keep the community aware of the proposals.”

The 1,800-foot-long pier, one of Southern California’s longest, was ripped into three pieces during a violent storm on Jan. 27, 1983. Its pilings and deck were all but destroyed two months later by the crashing surf of a second storm. When the weather calmed down, all that remained was an island stub at the far end of the pier and a battered and abandoned diner atop it.

With local fund-raising efforts and government money, the pier was rebuilt and reopened two years to the day after the first brutal storm.

Rebuilding the restaurant took longer. Construction was not completed until September, then the first bidder selected for negotiating a lease deal backed out, Joseph said.

The current structure, which cost the city about $450,000, would be modified if Griffith’s proposal is accepted by the City Council, he said. To change the restaurant’s current “coffee shop” appearance, Griffith told the council he wants to add a second story and make it more upscale.

The second story was one target of many objections that came from the audience. Some people at the meeting claimed that the height would obstruct the ocean view and magnify the scale of the restaurant into something more swanky than the local residents need or want.

“The pier is for fishermen and for people to stroll,” said one resident, pointing at a drawing of the ocean side of the proposed restaurant. “There’s hardly any room to walk more than two abreast by there.”

But Joseph said Tuesday that the restaurant building already has gabled ceilings that would require adding only four feet in height to convert the restaurant into a two-story building.

He said the city staff is only following through with directions from the City Council. “If they told me to negotiate with a burger joint, fine. I do what I’m told.”

Additional concerns with the proposal Griffith presented at the meeting included possibly inadequate parking, especially during the summer, and how late the restaurant and its bar would operate.

But opponents seemed most concerned about the placement of the item on the council’s consent calendar, a move that Grgas characterized as “inadvertent.”

More public comment--this time scheduled--will be heard on the restaurant proposal at the April 27 council meeting. City Council members said they now will have time to review the 30-page lease proposal, which they received last Thursday.