BY ADRIANA HERNANDEZ
Daily Post Staff Writer
The parklets on University Avenue and Ramona Street, with tents covering restaurant tables, should not be allowed on California Avenue because they “clutter” the street, an architect hired by the city said Wednesday.
Restaurants on California Avenue will have to pick between three options that don’t fully enclose the area due to fire safety regulations. They’d have to surround their outdoor dining area with 1. plants, 2. rails or 3. clear screens.
Palo Alto Retail Committee unanimously voted to recommend the City Council approve the design elements proposed by architect Bruce Fukuji and to consider adding public restrooms.
Fukuji recommended alternatives to parklets to the retail committee yesterday, showing that the area could look more open if the changes were made. He said that California Avenue has a higher density of restaurants, which may reduce open space.
He does not recommend continuing the ongoing parklet program on California Avenue that allows restaurants to have tents for outdoor dining.
An alternative to having tents is umbrellas. Sahlik Khan, who opened the restaurant Zareen’s with his mother, was against the proposed changes.
“Imagine if everyone had an umbrella, it would look like a farmers market. So I don’t see how we are progressing here. In fact, I would prefer the cheap tents that we have,” Khan said during public comment.
Khan said restaurants have had no direction for three years and are doing what is best for their business.
“We are the ones who are going to push the street forward. We are the ones that are going to bring the people to the street,” Khan said.
Khan said that restaurants are on the same page with the committee to drive more foot traffic to California Avenue.
“All those things contribute to, as I was saying, a lot of clutter on that street and those are aesthetic things,” Fukuji said during the meeting. “It makes the street look temporary. What we are really trying to do is end the temporary aura.”
Fukuji said some feedback they received was that the street looks so temporary that tenants wouldn’t be interested in locating there. Alongside aesthetics, fire safety was a priority when making the design plans for the street usage. When restaurants have a tent or an enclosed area during the night, the heaters they use could cause a fire.
“These (heaters) are a problem,” Haz Mat Specialist Dave Villarreal said. “They put them under the canopies, which are flammable, it’s polyester, some sort of vinyl, which is extremely flammable. They will burn, melt and injure people. Having sides and enclosing the whole thing also adds the problem of carbon dioxide poisoning.”
Villarreal said that there is a fire code that restricts restaurants from having propane heaters in parklets.
The new guidelines, which allow for more open space, will let restaurants choose between electric or propane heaters.
During public comment, people said they wanted public restrooms.
“Having public restrooms is something that both businesses and the guests that are on the street talk to us about,” CEO of Palo Alto Chamber of Commerce Charlie Weidanz said.
Weidanz was also concerned about safety when motorcyclists passed by the street and didn’t obey the 8 mph speed limit and how to reinforce it.
“Bicycles are an issue on Third Thursdays and all the time,” Carol Garsten said.
Garsten is the producer and founder of the Third Thursday community music festival on California Avenue that started in May 2023. The event uses the street to set up stages for live music.
Fukuji recommended renovating California Avenue to be more of a “midcentury optimism” design, popular among merchants and in a public survey.
The goal for the street is to make it a hangout spot for teenagers and help retailers and restaurants thrive.
The City Council will have to vote to make the changes Fukuji suggested.
The CAL Ave set up with street stripes for cars is another thing that makes the blocked off street look temporary. Also what is the deal with bikes the original street closure signs said that bikes must be walked!!! This is especially important with motorized bikes.
Sure, let’s have restrooms and eliminate fire dangers if necessary.
But the architect seems to miss the point. Our public spaces are for humans to live in, not for sterile aesthetic concepts.
The California Avenue shopping district is alive and fun to walk in. You don’t have to worry about cars, or see or hear them. Children play. People smile and talk to each other. I shop there whenever I can. It’s been a success story.
“Fukuji recommended renovating California Avenue to be more of a “midcentury optimism” design, popular among merchants and in a public survey.”
How many people responded to the consultant’s survey on signage and streetscapes that didn’t include ONE single low-cost option?
How many morons does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Amazing that the City of Palo Alto functions at all.
Blocking off cal ave is stupid. Maybe for weekends but not full time. Businesses are being hurt. I know I never go there anymore. It looks tacky with the road blocks. Why would people go to an area where they can’t drive down to even see what’s there. A lot of hassle to park. It was much user friendly before. Lived 2 blocks away for 42 years. It’s destroying businesses.
No tents but umbrellas? OK that works all summer. But what about when it rains all the time? Remember that? It happens for a lot of the year…
Google maps has a feature where you can look back on how streets looked in the past years (which everybody should take a look at for a second), and comparing to how California Avenue looked before blocking off the street, everything looks so much more lively. There are cars driving by, giving the street a more active feeling, and it doesn’t look like a radiation containment zone like it does today.
California Avenue is genuinely so ugly that I am actually appalled at how everybody just seems to be okay with this, it’s already worse enough that the businesses are struggling too. Maybe 1 or 2 already well known food spots are thriving which brings some foot traffic to the other stores by people already there, but losing the ability to drive by and see what california avenue has to offer is hurting the street as a whole. And not to forget, those tacky orange road blocks aren’t helping bring people in to the street either, get rid of them now and open up the street!! You can put as many cute little plants as you want next to those road blocks and convince yourselves it “looks fine” but it’s like putting makeup on a pig, still ugly.
These city officials have no sense of aesthetics or how to make a street look nice like bustling Santana row, but this isn’t santana row, it’s california avenue and it’s dead enough as it is on any day besides Friday or Saturday, which still isn’t bringing as many people like it used to prior to 2020. If i’m looking to go for a fun time out to enjoy the night with friends, the last place i’m considering is California Avenue. Downtown has somewhat a sense of charm to it, besides the weird parts, and there are cars driving by, allowing people to see what’s going on and just bringing an overall active feeling to the area. Do you think New York City would be as high energy and alluring as it is without cars driving by and people walking side by side, rather than spread out in an awkward and asymmetrical manner like California Avenue.
I am so sick and tired of this street being blocked off, it looks ugly, nobody actually likes it, and the ones who say they do are lying to themselves. And most importantly, it’s hurting the businesses!! They are the backbone of this society, not your dorky little bicycles having ample amounts of space to break the rules of the road regardless. People are losing their livelihoods to the terrible decisions this city makes, wake up people!!!
Most of the council members have not worked in the retail or hospitality industries and therefore have no idea how to bring back foot traffic to California Ave. What they’ve done so far has sharply reduced sales. The complete closure to cars will be the death knell to those struggling to survive. In the next council election, incumbents seeking a second term (most likely Lythcott-Haimes, Lauing and Veenker) should be held to account for what they’ve done to this once thriving retail area. They shouldn’t be allowed to blame Shikada because he works for them and takes their direction. They shouldn’t be allowed to say the property owners and business tenants wanted a bike mall because they didn’t. This is entirely council’s fault.
Let’s not forget that the “retail consultants” the city hires have no local knowledge so they keep pushing the same ideas to Palo Alto that they pitch to other cities. They can’t even manage to locate and interview the former PA retailers who moved all the way to Sharon Heights and Los Altos.
What a HUGE waste of time and money, speaking of which there’s also the wasted money to repave Cal Ave which is already smooth since it’s been car-free for years!
The restaurants don’t need these parklet porches, they need cars passing by in front of their businesses in order to attract customers. A bike path isn’t going to work as far as bringing in guests. These council members are out of touch and need to be replaced.
Before COVID, if someone suggested closing off a PUBLIC STREET so restaurants could seat their customers on it, you’d say it was ridiculous. Dining on the street!?!? Dining in parking spots!?!? Blocking cars from accessing shops?!?! Pee-wee golf?!?! Absurd!
Maybe it was OK as a temporary help to some — not all! — restaurants. But now those restaurant owners think they’re entitled to our streets. They don’t care that other businesses, other restaurants, and shoppers are hurting.
Cal Ave used to be my go-to shopping area. Country Sun, beauty salon, Printers Inc., art supplies, shoes and shoe repair. Even a dry cleaners. I haven’t been back for years since they blocked off the street. Looks like a dump. Potted plants won’t make it all better.
Blame this on several out-of-touch city councils who have spent millions over the years (remember the sidewalks with glass chips and the healthy trees that were cut down?) on Cal Ave., topped off by the current consultant who knows nothing about Palo Alto or its residents.
Tragic.
Can’t wait for council to work on University Ave next. Based on the vacancy rate on cal ave, it ought to be a big success.
It works like this. The council and city staff are anti-car. They believe in a socialist utopia where everyone walks, rides bikes or takes mass transit. If they give the street space to the restaurants, that prevents car traffic in the future. This fits in with previous decisions to put roadblocks on streets (called “traffic calming”) and reduce four-lane roads to two lanes (Middlefield north of downtown, Arastradero). People would have never voted for this anti-car philosophy, so they’ve made sure it never lands on a ballot. And, at election time, they pretend they’re moderates in order to get votes.