Torrance : Cooking Odors Sniffed Out

Responding to complaints about cooking odors from restaurants, the City Council voted unanimously to require new restaurants, with few exceptions, to obtain conditional use permits.

Exempted from the new ordinance, approved on first reading Tuesday, are take-out establishments where food preparation requires no baking, frying or smoking; restaurants 300 feet from residential areas; take-out facilities in shopping centers with more than 200 parking spaces, and such businesses as gasoline stations that sell snacks.

The ordinance would also require take-out-only restaurants to have one parking space per 200 square feet of floor area.