North Park Alcohol

By David Harvey

SDUN Reporter

A North Park resident has created an organization to fight what he believes is a flood of bars coming into the 30th Street and University Avenue business district.

Don Leichtling said he established the North Park Residential Improvement District (NP-RID) in January because he is concerned about the potential for more alcohol licenses to be granted in the area.

“If there’s three clubs in North Park, that’s all right, but if there are 30, at some point we’re going to top out,” Leichtling said.

The three clubs he cites are U-31, 3112 University Ave.; True North, which opened last year at 30th Street and North Park Way; and URBN Coal Fired Pizza, 3085 University Ave., which is slated to open soon.

Leichtling, who lives a few blocks from the district, said drunken bar patrons have vandalized his car and home, vomited on his porch, had sex in his yard and attacked his neighbor. He said other residents have experienced similar disturbances, which have increased in frequency in the last few years.

“I’ve seen North Park change drastically, and it has the potential to get much worse,” he said.

Yet Steve Billings, who opened U-31 in 2007, said he has seen a dramatic decrease in crime since purchasing the property in 1998.

“When I first bought this bar I wouldn’t walk alone to 30th Street at 12 o’clock at night, or I’d be cautious of my surroundings, but now it’s not uncommon for females to walk alone from here to 30th any day of the week,” he said. “There’s liveliness, there’s activity, there’s movement and it’s really pushed the crime element away.”

Nevertheless, U-31 hasn’t been free of conflict with its neighbors.

Valerie Loy, who lives off the alley behind U-31, said she has consistently complained to business owners and police about noise from the bar, trash left behind by patrons and people drinking outside her home.

“The bar had heavy bass going on…our windows would literally rattle…and it was causing a lot of havoc in the neighborhood with people lingering in the alley, doing drugs and urinating and creating a lot of noise and there was trash all over,” she said.

In October, Loy spoke with Billings. He addressed her complaints by installing a lock on U-31’s amplifiers, adding $40,000 worth of soundproofing on the roof and building a wall along the alleyway. He also hired additional security and outside “rovers” who ask patrons and passersby to be respectful of the neighborhood by keeping the noise down.

Despite the improvements at U-31, Loy said URBN Coal Fire Pizza – scheduled to open soon across the street from U-31 – will only exacerbate the problems. Along with her neighbors, she filed a formal protest with the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control against URBN’s liquor license.

“I’ve talked to a lot of renters, like me, who have had some sort of negative experience from these bars opening up,” she said. “We canvassed the neighborhood and got plenty of other people to protest [URBN’s liquor license] as well.”

URBN owner Jon Mangini said he is solely interested in operating a restaurant at the location, although he hopes his license will allow URBN to remain open until 2 a.m.

“I think we’re giving the neighborhood a great place,” he said. “It’s really going to clean up that corner that’s been vacant for so long. We want to be a bar, but more than that we want to be a restaurant, and I just can’t see a restaurant hurting the neighborhood.”

Of the 10 new alcohol license applications ABC is reviewing for North Park, the community has only protested URBN and a microbrewery planned for the Pacific Drapery Building next to True North at 30th Street and North Park Way, ABC District Administrator Jennifer Hill said.

She said both establishments received numerous protests, which go on public record after ABC’s legal unit reviews them.

“The application submitted at [the proposed microbrewery] has 92 valid protests,” Hill said via e-mail. “The application submitted [by URBN] has had numerous protests submitted, but the department is still awaiting determination of validity and acceptance by the ABC legal unit.”

The protest period for the microbrewery ended Dec. 31 while protests closed for URBN Feb. 6. An ABC investigation can take up to 90 days.

The San Diego Police Department has protested most of the license applications, she said, but has also expressed a willingness to withdraw its objections if establishments adhere to operating restrictions.

“If you don’t permit entertainment, it’s pretty hard for them to be anything but a restaurant, and if 50 percent of their quarterly gross sales have to be food and you make them close at 11 or midnight, there’s really no way for them to become a bar, a party place or a club, because they don’t have those features which would draw that crowd,” Hill said.

But those guidelines are not always enough, said Dan Tomsky, senior project manager for Vitality San Diego, which works with the city’s communities to promote public health and safety.

“There’s really not substantial enough community powers to see that these places are being adequately considered for possible impacts they have on the neighborhood and whether they are coming along with clear mitigation plans to the kind of problems they may create,” he said. “It’s really a matter of three things: size, scale and balance.”

Hill said ABC limits licenses based on residential population by census tract. The University Avenue and 30th Street area is on the boundary of census tracts 13 and 14, which stretch from El Cajon Boulevard south to Upas Street and from Arizona Street east to Ray Street.

Tract 13 is allowed seven on-sale licenses – permits that allow businesses to serve alcohol – but 21 have been granted. Tract 14 is allowed four on-sale licenses, yet 20 were granted. Hill said ABC allows for these exceptions based on “public convenience or necessity,” which the police department determines for bars and clubs, and ABC decides for restaurants.

“If there’s a revitalization area, if there’s growth, if they’re offering a service that is not commonly offered at the time and if there’s no objections from anyone in the community, then that’s sort of the silent way of saying it is meeting the public necessity,” Hill said.

When new owners take over an existing license, she added, ABC is only required to investigate the owner’s business plan, not the location, as has been the case for many bars in North Park including True North, U-31, and the Bluefoot bar at 30th and Upas streets.

Despite concerns such as those coming from NP-RID, Hill said the number of registered complaints about existing license holders is relatively low. In 2009, there were just four complaints filed from North Park, and that was the most filed in at least five years, Hill said.

“We haven’t received a lot of complaints in the North Park area,” Hill said. “[There are] some census tracts where we get five a month…so four over the whole year, that’s a really low count.”

San Diego police issued 99 drunk-in-public and 41 DUI citations in North Park between Nov. 21 and Feb. 20 but Tomsky said many alcohol-related offenses go unreported because the police department is short-handed and ill-equipped due to budget cuts. He said his North Park Action Team – a grassroots group of residents who work on quality-of-life issues – has tracked a notable increase in bar-related crime over the past year.

“The community relations officers are stretched,” Tomsky said. “[The CROs] for the North Park area serve the whole Western Division, which includes Ocean Beach and that whole area too, so they’re not as present as we would like, or they would like, to be.”

Tomsky said the city’s agencies need to work together, along with North Park residents, to find a community planning solution that will meet residents’ needs while still allowing business development.

“There needs to be land-use guidelines addressing size, scale and balance of restaurants doubling as bars or clubs,” he said.

With more bar and restaurant patrons in North Park, parking is also becoming a major issue, Tomsky said.

Elizabeth Studebaker, executive director of North Park’s business improvement district, said the city has increased hours, hired more security and added additional lighting at the neighborhood’s parking garage, which charges a $5 flat-rate after 5 p.m. At least one bar, True North, validates parking.

“Exacerbation has been prevented even further by some of these solutions,” she said. “But infrequent visitors are still parking on the street, and that’s probably where a lot of the impacts are being seen in the residential area.”

Leichtling said enough isn’t being done about parking.

“People are too cheap to park in the parking garage, so they park in the street,” he said.

Leichtling said he wants the city to establish a parking district in North Park, installing meters and providing residents with parking passes.

But those ideas are falling on deaf ears, Leichtling said, because too many people in North Park’s planning and business groups are unaffected by the problems. They “live in Burlingame,” he said, and aren’t directly affected by the decisions they make.

Studebaker said most members of the advisory and community boards that make decisions about North Park live in the area.

“A lot of the criticism is that nobody on the planning committee lives close to the district, that nobody making any of these decisions is impacted by them, and it’s just not true,” she said.

The North Park Planning Committee roster shows two of its 15 members live in Burlingame – an enclave sandwiched between North Park and South Park – although none live immediately adjacent to the business district.

Studebaker said more organizations such as NP-RID will only muddle efforts to find compromise between business growth and residential comfort.

“We already have a residential organization here and it exists to work primarily on residents’ quality of life issues, so the development of a new organization I’m quite frankly confused about,” Studebaker said. “The last thing we need is one more group when we have all the community infrastructure in place. It just needs to be utilized appropriately.”

Studebaker said it is important to keep in mind that North Park has been a business district for more than 100 years.

“While many of the adjacent communities have been quiet and low key for the last 20 years, the commercial zoning has been in place for a long time,” Studebaker said. “From an economic perspective, a lot of people still see North Park as a good place to invest because it’s not oversaturated.”

District 3 Councilmember Todd Gloria said although the North Park business community benefits the community, it needs to respect residents.

“Neighbors, bar and other business owners, the city and the State Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control must all work together to ensure that standards and conditions are implemented and met by businesses who wish to operate in North Park,” Gloria said.

Studebaker said she believes businesses will respond if residents show a willingness to cooperate.

“We need to stop screaming at each other and we all need to work together and sit down in a calm, civilized manner and talk about solutions,” she said. “It is not in the best interest of any business to have a bad reputation. They want to fit in to this community, they want to be successful and they want to have a positive image. I think where we find the most serious issue is where there’s a communication breakdown.”

To that end, Hill is organizing a community meeting this month for North Park residents and business owners.

“The meeting is going to be scheduled to educate the community on the statutes and policies of the ABC licensing and enforcement processes,” she said. “It is to inform them and to open communication for their concerns concerning ABC licenses in general.”