Recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record, conclude the public hearing and grant an Entertainment Permit with conditions on the application of Relevant, Inc., dba Marina Wine, at 194 Marina Drive, Suite 101, for Entertainment without Dancing. (District 3)
Thank you. And with that, we are concluding public comment. We're going to go to item 12, please, and then the hearings. Actually. Actually, no, we're going to do the hearings and they're going to go out and we're going to go to 12 and 13. Hearing number one report from Financial Management Recommendation to receive supporting documentation under the record, include the public hearing and grant an entertainment permit with conditions on the application of Marina wine at 194 Marina Drive Suite 1214 Entertainment Without Dancing District three. Luciano. It's required. Yes. Please raise your right hand. You and each of you solemnly state that the testimony you may give in the cause now pending before this body shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. So help you God. Okay, Mr. Modica. Thank you, Mayor. Right. Jackie's business services officer and Emily Armstrong will be presenting the staff report. Good evening, honorable mayor and members of the city council. Tonight you have before you an application for entertainment without dancing for relevant ink doing business as Marina Wine located at 194 Marina Drive, Suite 101, operating as a restaurant with alcohol in Council District three. All of the necessary departments have reviewed the application and have provided their recommended conditions as contained in the hearing packet. I stand ready to answer any questions Council may have, and that concludes staff's report. Can I get a second, please? There's a motion or secondarily a public comment. Mr. Morris and Mr. Goodhew. Mr.. Good to you here. No, Mr. Morris. Mr. Mayor, I don't know. With Miss Price not being here, I'm not sure whether she can hear it. Okay, great. My name is John Morris. I'm a partner, general manager of Boathouse on the Bay at 190 Marina Drive. I'm not here today to oppose the entertainment permit, but I am worried about today's. This has been an ongoing issue at the boathouse for five years regarding this establishment, which Stuart just bought maybe nine months ago. I don't blame Stuart one iota for what he's trying to accomplish. I'd be doing exactly the same thing he's doing. But unfortunately, I think what we're going to do is going to add more problems to the existing problems we already have today. They just said it's a restaurant bar. He has no kitchen. He has no restrooms. He's built a 20 foot wide or 15 foot wide garage door that bleeds out to his patio now. So I know one of the conditions are that you have to have the entertainment inside. Well, I know exactly what he's going to do. An entertainer is going to have his feet right on the line of the inside of the building. And he's going to be playing to a total audience of inside and outside. Well, before it was just inside. The vast majority of these people go to the restrooms. He has one. He has a key for one bathroom upstairs. London boats, which has 25 duffy boats right around the corner from me, has no bathrooms. They use the same key to go to the same bathroom. I'll just tell you right now. What do you think? They're all going to go into the boathouse? And I would do the same thing and use the bathrooms at the boathouse. Aqua Link. 14,000 people wrote our link in the month of August. No bathrooms. Guess where they're going? The dock is next to the boathouse. I don't know what to say that. I just want to make sure that conditions, whatever they may be, they have to be put in place. They have to be followed up on. Being 20 years on Pine Avenue within in segment license I had, you could never get rid of the bad guys. Nobody would ever do anything. Nobody is held responsible when they're going overboard with the music. We pay $450,000 in rent annually in that location. The wine bar is going to pay 25,000. He has maybe one or two employees. We have 90 employees. I'm just concerned. And my license is ten feet away from his patio. I'm license in the courtyard. I don't know whether the staff knew that. We use that courtyard all the time for banquets and it's tied into our banquet room. So there's already a clash. I've lived and breathed this stuff for 40 years in this city. I had my first restaurant I built here in 1979. I know what the issues are and how the remedies are, and it's a very slow process. So I just want to make sure there's a method that we can come to with the city to have somebody license taken away, not in a nine month, one year, 18 months, two year fashion. If it's creating a negative impact, it needs to be addressed. And I'd like to recommend maybe putting a committee together of city staff, the financial staff or whomever puts out an entertainment license that they meet on a quarterly basis and discuss other issues to where that can be addressed immediately and not get aggravated. That's all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Morris. So let me go go back to. There was a. Can I get a motion, please? And let me go back to Councilman Price. Do we have staff that's prepared to talk? I only caught the tail end of Mr. Morris's comments as staff prepared to address that issue because I agree with him. It's it's really difficult for us when someone's not following the rules in terms of entertainment at their establishment. My staff and I have tried to do our own like counter-surveillance measures. And it just so turns out every time we go to a place, there's never music playing when we show up. So can you address that? Yes. So we appreciate Mr. Morris comments. And we know this has been an issue in the past. The entertainment permit that we're recommending tonight does have a condition that does state that all entertainment has to remain indoors, so any doors or windows have to remain closed during the hours of the entertainment. And I know that garage door concept was a concern of yours. So that is addressed in the entertainment permit. And we also work with PD on these issues. So if issues were to come up regarding the entertainment, they do contact us right away and we stay on top of those issues and stay in touch with them. Okay. And thank you for that. I appreciate that. You know, I will be watching this issue very closely and working with our acting city manager on making sure we have a swift response when we do have complaints, because we also have a lot of live awards in that area. And I do know Mr. Morris's business is fortunate to have received an entertainment permit, and we do monitor and very responsive to calls or complaints that we get from liveaboard with with that business. And we would not that we've gotten any complaints. But in general, we want to make sure that we're treating all businesses the same in terms of what they are allowed to do in their operations and how it impacts everyone else. So that's absolutely important. I want to talk about this particular item I'm in supportive of this item. I've met with the new owner of this business. I will say I was extremely disappointed in the practices of the previous owner since they were completely out of compliance with the city's rules and expectations. No permits were sought in the manner that they were supposed to be. And I have been personally assured by the owner, the new owner, that that won't happen. And I feel very confident. We've also been working with the tenant at that location to ensure that the signage for bathroom facilities and other public access points are made clearer so as not to impact other businesses in that shopping center. And I will state right now for all time this will be recorded, that it's my expectation that every business owner with whom we do business in that shopping center understands that having an entertainment permit and other conditions associated with running a successful business there. Comes with it. A lot of responsibility. And that responsibility is both to the city, to the residents and to the other businesses in the area. We expect you guys to work together in a friendly competition in order to ensure all of your successes. That entire area is changing. Tremendous opportunity for all of us. And I think that if we're working together within the rules and helping one another be successful, everyone serves a different interest in that. It's a very diverse set of businesses there, and they serve different populations. And so I want us to be able to work together and make sure that we are respectful of the impacts that our business model will have on the other businesses. So with that, Stewart, I completely would you like to say a few words? Councilwoman Price We just wanted to ask within this entertainment permit, we can add a condition regarding the signage for the bathrooms, if that's a concern for the parties involved. I think I don't think anyone would object to that. I think signage that clearly marks where the public restrooms are would be great. And I understand there there were reworking some of the signs because it before it said bathroom for tenants and the average customer doesn't know what that means. So I think we're changing it to have London Vote Rentals and marina wine specific signage. Okay, great. Yes, Mr. Mayor. Members of the City Council. My name is Stewart Nakahara and the new owner of the Marina Wine Bar. I just want to thank you, Councilwoman Price, for all your help and Lisa West in your. Office. For all. The help that. You've given me throughout this process. And I do know it's a long. And tedious process with a lot of information. The first thing that I'd like to address that came up are the bathroom situations, because that's something we've really worked hard at trying to fix. We've been having meetings with the Counsel's Office as soon as or as recent as last Monday to come up with maybe changing the even the traffic flow. So instead of sending people out our front door to go to the restrooms, that goes right past the boathouse, front doors to send them along this other corridor that we have that leads them straight up to the stairs where our bathrooms are with a big. Sign that says Marina Wine Restrooms upstairs. So we think just maybe changing the traffic flow will help a lot of that and push people away from the front door, from the front or the boathouse instead of coming up through through our ways. So that's one thing that we're working on. And I believe the artwork for the sign is done and I'm not sure if it's been ordered yet, but I know that everyone's signed off on it and gotten it ready to go. As far as the other stuff that we talked about, to Mr. Morse's point that you made earlier about music being outside and with the previous ownership not necessarily in compliance. If you're familiar with the area, about a year ago there was an outdoor stage that was built on an exterior platform out in the out in the courtyard that music faced out from the parking lot and it wasn't shielded by any sort of buildings was surrounding. It was just there echoing out in competition with a lot of the other noises that were out that were coming from Milanese and a couple of the other spots. One of the first things that we did is we tore that out and got rid of it and moved the entertainment inside. We do have a large garage door that we put in that rolls up that extends indoor to the outdoor. We created a music performer's area inside. We don't have any speakers outside anymore. We also got in all of that. My goal in this wine bar is not to be a rock bar or a club. It's a place that you can sit down and have a glass of wine or beer and not have to shout to be heard. So our goal isn't to create music that is exuberant and, you know, beyond our whatever. I think it's 50 feet from our patio. That's that goes straight to the boathouse. We've been really, really diligent about making sure we don't have speakers in that area and that we are being good neighbors. There is a lot of entertainment in that area. Milanese, I know, has a speaker that they put outside that faces us toward the parking lot, the boathouse area. Their music is on the backside. So we don't really hear them and I don't think they hear us. But there are customers coming in and out do so we just try and be really aware of of that situation. Where we're located is right in the center, right at the entrance. So I feel like it's our responsibility to put together a good foot forward, not just for us, but for the complex as a whole. So that's my goal. Thank you very much, Stuart. I do have to count someone else, if anything. Okay. There's no other public comment. I just want to add one thing. One is I want to congratulate you, Stuart, first of all, and thank you for your ownership. Obviously, you have a love of Long Beach in the community. I also just more broadly and I want to agree with Councilman Price just more broadly to the staff. There is so much happening at this location. And so I just would be interested and maybe Councilman Price might, you know, might be more plugged in. But just from the parking perspective, what's going on with the slips out there, the public restrooms, the the amount of folks that are coming down to what I think is a very successful enterprise and restaurants and bars? I'd love to understand that a little bit more because I think that obviously we have we are the major stakeholder in that area. And and is there a is there a planning process underway or what what's what is happening? Yes, there is absolutely a lot going on down there. There are it's kind of a victim of our own success type of approach. It has become so active with so many great businesses coming in that there are some conflicts between the multiple different uses down there the boaters, the the visitors, the businesses. And so we are actively working on it with the groups. It is city property down there, but it's also privately managed by a group called Bandcamp. And then we have all of the city assets that are there. So we are currently in the process of really working on the parking because that is one of the larger issues . But we're also working with Mr. Morris and others on issues related to bathroom access. So a lot is going on. We can certainly give you more updates. And and Councilmember Price has been very plugged. In as well. I just want to I know that as as second PCH opens in the next 30 days and the San Pedro Fish Company opens not to not to long after after that or may be open very soon. This is this has become for from a city perspective, one of our city's biggest success stories. I think just just this this area that is really a city asset. And so I'd be interested I know from a from a. Attraction perspective and from a place that is, I think, doing so well. I'm glad to hear that we are trying to take a more comprehensive approach to everything that's happening, and particularly the patterns of where the public is going. Because I have attempted on many occasions to head down there and, you know, if you're persistent, you you'll find a spot and you'll get there. But it is very successful, which is really great. So so thank you. Thank you, Stuart. And there's a motion and a second to conclude the hearing and go ahead and adopt the with recommendations and the conditions. So please cast your votes.