Monterey City Council votes to extend outdoor seating permits until end of 2023

MONTEREY, Calif. (KION-TV): UPDATE ON FEB. 21, 2023 AT 5:10 PM: The Monterey City Council has decided to extended outdoor seating permits until Dec. 31, 2023.

The council voted unanimously to extend temporary outdoor business permits and outdoor heaters on Fisherman's Wharf. The council said the extension allows them to coincide with the California Coastal Commission permit review.

The council voted to terminate their COVID-19 emergency to coincide with the State ending their COVID-19 emergency on Feb. 28.

Fisherman's Wharf in Monterey aims to keep outdoor dining

For both locals and tourists alike, Old Fisherman’s Wharf offers a different number of places to look at.

The popular places to stop by are the local restaurants with an option of eating outdoors. However, this could be taken away due to certain requirements from the California Coastal Commission.

According to these requirements, restaurants across the wharf must submit a coastal development permit to continue using outdoor dining.

This stems from a complaint filed about outdoor dining impacting public access.

Now all of this has received a similar reaction of confusion and disappointment.

Several people don’t understand where outdoor dining is impacting public access and will be disappointed if the outdoor dining choice is taken away.

Restaurant owners, like Dominic Mercurio, aren’t on the same page with the complaint either.

“After 15 years of building up a nice clientele,” Mercurio said. “Now they wanna take it away without any type of negotiating. To build this outdoor…is not gonna happen. It’s not a reality.”

The City of Monterey is doing what they can to understand what the commission is asking of the businesses on the wharf.

The city sent a letter to California Coastal Comiss to get a better understanding of the application process the restaurants need to do.

The commission sent back a letter with clarification of the outdoor seating saying in part:

”as part of any CDP application to authorize new/expanded outdoor dining, we would need to start with a complete review of each lease site to evaluate the proposed projects against the permitted baseline and any extant CDP terms and conditions.”

First time tourists, like the Estrada’s, enjoy the sights of Monterey and would be sad to see outdoor dining go.

Mercurio is doing what he can to comply but he doesn’t see these changes ending with a happy outcome.

“We did what we were supposed to do to get our lease extensions, we did what we were supposed to do on the outdoor seating, the permit process, we did everything,” Mercurio said. “There’s gonna be more upset people than happy people I think if we do take this outdoor seating out. It’s not gonna make anyone happy.”

Now the City of Monterey will have its council meeting tomorrow evening.

During that meeting, the city will discuss pushing the application deadline from the end of this year to the end of 2023