Yesterday, the Los Angeles City Council’s Planning and Land Use Management (PLUM) Committee voted to support a motion by City Council Member Mitch O’Farrell to include all of his Council District 13 (including Larchmont Blvd.) in the city’s new Restaurant Beverage Program. The program was created to make it easier and faster for restaurants meeting a number of specific conditions to obtain liquor permits for the sales of either beer and wine or a full line of alcoholic beverages.
When the Los Angeles City Council approved the new RBP earlier this year, it was left to each City Councilmember to decide whether or not their districts, or which parts of their districts, would participate. And over the next few months, most city council members – including both O’Farrell and CD 5’s Paul Koretz – entered motions opting their full districts into the program. (Only one Councilmember, CD 15’s Joe Buscaino, asked that part of his district, which has been negatively affected by an over-concentration of liquor licenses in certain areas, be declared a “sensitive use” area under the RBP, and thus subject to additional restrictions.)
Most of these motions, including Koretz’s for CD 5, passed easily and quickly through committee reviews and a final Council vote. But the process in CD 13 became a bit more complicated when some residents of the Windsor Square neighborhood, adjacent to Larchmont Blvd., lobbied this spring to have lower Larchmont (south of Beverly Blvd.), declared a sensitive use area for alcohol sales, based on its proximity to local residential streets and the neighborhood’s 100-year history of supporting only applications for beer and wine sales, not the sale of a full line of alcoholic beverages.
O’Farrell delayed scheduling his motion for a committee vote while the community discussed the possible sensitive use designation. Eventually, proponents of proposal brought it to the Greater Wilshire Neighborhood Council’s Land Use Committee in April, and the full GWNC board in May. When a vote at the May 12 GWNC board meeting failed to win support for the sensitive use proposal, however, the path was cleared for O’Farrell’s original proposal (to include all of CD 13 in the main Restaurant Beverage Program) to proceed.
As CD 13 spokesperson Dan Halden told the Buzz today:
“The Resolution was introduced to apply to all of Council District #13 and there were no carve outs for sensitive uses anywhere in the district. We delayed the scheduling of the Resolution so that there could be more discussion about the merits of a sensitive use zone. The Greater Wilshire Neighborhood Council had an opportunity to weigh in, as did the Windsor Square Association, the Larchmont Village Business Improvement District, restaurants and neighbors. Based on those conversations, considering the restrictive conditions of the Restaurant Beverage Program Ordinance we felt that more than sufficient controls were in place.”
About Elizabeth Fuller
Elizabeth Fuller was born and raised in Minneapolis, MN but has lived in LA since 1991 - with deep roots in both the Sycamore Square and West Adams Heights-Sugar Hill neighborhoods. She spent 10 years with the Greater Wilshire Neighborhood Council, volunteers at Wilshire Crest Elementary School, and is the co-owner/publisher of the Buzz.
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