Fundraising underway for Promenade de la Playa plan in La Jolla Shores

The latest plans — and a plea for donations — for what is being called the Promenade de la Playa went before the La Jolla Shores Association during its Nov. 12 meeting. 

The promenade would formalize and refine a street closure for outdoor dining that has been in effect for more than five years on Avenida de la Playa between El Paseo Grande and Calle de la Plata and create an “al fresco” pedestrian walkway to go with the restaurant use. 

That section of Avenida de la Playa has been off limits to vehicles during certain hours since July 2020 to allow restaurants to provide seating on the street. The program originally was intended to assist restaurants amid COVID-19-related restrictions on indoor dining, but it has remained long past the end of those restrictions due to its popularity.

A right-of-way permit making the outdoor dining program permanent was approved Aug. 6 by the San Diego Development Services Department and by the Transportation Department soon after.

The new permit keeps that stretch of the street permanently closed to traffic around the clock, with the condition that a 20-foot buffer be provided for emergency vehicles, according to La Jollan Phil Wise, who spearheaded The Shores outdoor dining project and has worked to keep it alive.

However, Wise said, about $150,000 needs to be raised for needed work, including new landscaping, bollards and signs, improvements to outdoor dining spaces and removing on-street lines. 

New bollards would be placed to keep cars off the street, but Wise said they would be removable if an emergency vehicle needs to get through. Aesthetically pleasing “Road closed” signs also would be posted, he said. 

Landscaping and potted plants would be brought in to make the look of the block consistent up and down the street.

Darren Moore, co-chair of the Shores Business Association and owner of several restaurants in La Jolla, including Shore Rider, Dough Momma Pizzeria and Cove House, said “It is going to be a cohesive greenbelt with natural-looking things and everyone in line. … We want this to look clean and sharp.”

Maintenance for the promenade would be handled by the Shores Business Association.

“We’re crafting documentation that will hold the membership of restaurants inside the promenade accountable for their storefronts,” Moore said. “The idea is to build a promenade that is not maintenance-intensive … but we would be self-policing.” 

The city of San Diego has given the business association two years from the time the permit was issued to complete the project. “So we need to raise the money now and start now,” Wise said.  

The matter was presented to LJSA for information only, and no vote was taken.

In addition to the money for the promenade, a few hundred thousand dollars more would be needed to fund a project to relocate the parking spaces lost in the formation of the promenade. Wise estimated a half-million dollars would be needed for both efforts.  

In 2023, the San Diego City Council consented to new California Coastal Commission regulations that require establishments closest to the beach to replace any public parking spaces taken by dining areas they operate on the street.

Original estimates of replacement parking spaces needed in The Shores was 26. But with three spaces taken away by the new “daylighting” law that prohibits street parking within 20 feet of an intersection or a crosswalk, two spaces adjacent to storm drains and 10 spaces designated as “no parking” that were determined could become legal parking spaces, the replacement number was reduced to 11.

The location of those spaces is the same as in a plan that received narrow support from LJSA last year to reduce the width of a sandy berm dividing the Kellogg Park parking lot on the west side of Camino del Oro.