Years after pandemic outdoor dining first became a staple across San Diego County, the South Bay community is looking to expand it — but with a catch.
Parklets were built across the city to help Chula Vista restaurant owners survive the pandemic. Now, city leaders want them gone by the first week of September because they’re suggesting new guidelines for outdoor dining.
Cesar Corona is the co-owner of Los Cuates Seafood and Bar on 3rd Avenue. He and his brother took over the family business at the peak of the pandemic. His restaurant is one of several on 3rd Avenue with an outdoor dining deck.
“Its just the look … the patio … Oh, let’s go dine outside,” Corona said.
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Corona said they built it because indoor seating was not allowed at the time, but since then it’s become a business boom.
He said sales have gone up 40% since the patios were installed.
“Once we found out that we were able to build these patios, it pretty much saved the business,” Corona said.
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Now Chula Vista City leaders are asking him and other business to tear down the existing decks by the first week of September, until they figure out how to regulate them.
“If they take these patios off, I think it will affect my business,” Corona said.
Chula Vista Mayor John McCann said the pandemic was an emergency situation and the patios were intended to be temporary to keep businesses open. Now he wants to create a subcommittee so businesses can follow clear rules for outdoor dining.
Some of them could even include having business owners pay fees to keep the parklets installed.
“I want to make sure that we have some formal guidelines to be able to put some outdoor dining opportunities and be able to make them permanent,” McCann said.
Gonzalo Quintero, Ph.D., is the co-owner of Vogue Tavern and President of the Downtown Chula Vista Association. His tavern also sits on 3rd Avenue.
Like Corona, he said the parklets have expanded his business capacity.
But with new rules on the horizon, Quintero worries taking them down will have the opposite effect.
“What we will see go away already is jobs would go away, changing of our operating dollars, changing of our revenue, and changing of tax revenue,” Quintero said.
Quintero supports the city’s efforts to set guidelines but says making the business tear down their parklets before the rules are put in place will cost them a lot of dollars without making much sense.
“Because that policy could be developed, and in the meantime we tear down the decks, and the very next day we can be told we can build something with the exactly with the same specks,” Quintero said.
