La Jolla Shores dining promenade gets permit to make it permanent

Just days before its previous permit was set to expire, a new permit extending the outdoor dining program in La Jolla Shores has been approved. This time, it won’t require renewals.

A right-of-way permit to keep a stretch of Avenida de la Playa permanently closed to vehicle traffic was approved by the San Diego Development Services Department on Aug. 6, the city said. A traffic control permit from the Transportation Department also is expected to be approved.

“I’m grateful the city departments, the community and merchants were able to work together to achieve this outcome,” San Diego City Council President Joe LaCava, whose District 1 includes La Jolla, said in a statement to the La Jolla Light.

A week earlier, city spokesman Richard Berg told the Light that an application for the right-of-way permit was filed by the La Jolla Shores Business Association in an effort to make the street dining area — called a promenade — a permanent fixture with no expiration date.

The previous permit was issued by the San Diego Special Events & Filming Department and required periodic renewals. It was scheduled to expire Saturday, Aug. 9, according to Berg.

The section of Avenida de la Playa between El Paseo Grande and Calle de la Plata has been off limits to vehicles during certain hours since July 2020. At first, it was done to allow restaurants to provide outdoor seating during restrictions on indoor dining during the COVID-19 pandemic. But the program has remained due to its popularity and has been allowed under the city special events permit.

La Jollan Phil Wise, who spearheaded The Shores outdoor dining project and has since worked to keep it alive, said the promenade will be closed to traffic around the clock, with the condition that a 20-foot buffer be provided for emergency vehicles. Restaurants will individually be responsible for getting permits to extend their outdoor dining further into the street, he said.

Wise added that the new permit calls for 11 parking spaces to be provided in the next two years to replace spaces lost to the street dining.

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.

Replacement spaces must be within 1,200 feet (less than a quarter-mile) of the lost spaces.

The original estimate 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, according to Berg and Wise.

The location of those spaces is the same as in a plan that received narrow support from the La Jolla Shores Association last year.

The proposal would reduce the width of a sandy berm that divides the Kellogg Park parking lot on the west side of Camino del Oro and create new parking spaces. The plan originally was for 24 spaces.

“The width of the asphalt near Kellogg Park along Camino del Oro will be widened, with no impact on the park’s current area,” according to Berg.