Victim of its own success

Mathis Winkler

CORONA DEL MAR -- It all began with a restroom -- or rather the lack

of one.

When Starbucks Coffee Co. officials opened their first Newport Beach

store on East Coast Highway in 1992, the city’s planners had only a vague

idea about what to expect.

Folks at City Hall envisioned a kind of takeout coffee bar, where

people would drop in for a quick shot of caffeine and be on their way. An

employee restroom in the back of the storage room seemed appropriate for

those few coffee-induced emergencies.

Keep in mind, at the time, just 165 or so Starbucks stores existed,

and they were clustered mainly in the Pacific Northwest. Starbucks -- and

the coffee craze it was part of -- would have made good stock speculation

but little else.

So the Corona del Mar outlet became one of the first 10 stores that

opened in California. By last year, the state alone was dotted with more

than 500 stores. Worldwide, the company operates about 3,300 coffee

places.

And it hasn’t been alone. Others, inspired by the company’s success,

set up similar gourmet coffee chains. Soon, two more coffee places opened

near Starbucks at the corner of East Coast Highway and Goldenrod Avenue.

Recently, a fourth one set up shop just down the street.

Drawn to the new gathering spot, Corona del Mar residents began to

fill up the corner and spend more time hanging out. With that came

natural human urges. Starbucks, concerned for the safety of both

customers and employees, closed the store’s restroom for public use. Then

the other coffee shops, which did include restrooms for patrons, began

experiencing a stream of pressed coffee fans from across the street.

In September 1999, Starbucks’ competitors began to complain to city

officials that people seemed to like their restrooms but not their

coffee.

The complaints set off more than a year of discussions between company

and city officials. The coffee guys suggested they lease an empty store

next door, because the original cafe didn’t have enough space to put in

more restrooms. Finally, the City Council approved an expansion proposal

Feb. 13 for the store. In addition to separate restrooms for men and

women, the remodeled cafe will include nine more seats indoor and four on

the patio.

Restrooms to parking spaces

When the city’s planning commissioners first looked at the project in

December, they decided an increase in store space would bring in more

customers.

And that was a problem. With customers would come more cars.

Commissioners decided Starbucks officials needed to work out agreements

with nearby property owners to use their parking spaces during the

morning coffee rush, from 6 to 9 a.m.

That didn’t work. Neither did a condition of approval that required

the company to move back its storefront to add more seats on the patio,

because the landlord vetoed the plan.

What A.J. Cool, the company’s asset manager for Southern California,

Nevada and Arizona, did do was talk to neighboring business owners to

work out parking deals.

The owner of a stationery store showed an interest. So did a bank

across the highway. Cool took his suggestions back to the city and

appealed the commission’s decision to council members.

At last week’ hearing, the city’s seven elected leaders struggled to

find a solution. Some, such as Mayor Gary Adams, said they didn’t have

enough information to make a decision.

“What they’re proposing is a fine use,” he said. “But I think to

ignore the parking problem isn’t the right thing to do.”

Others seemed less concerned with the parking problem than the message

a denial of the project would send to business owners.

“I’m not looking for more parking,” Councilwoman Norma Glover said. “I

think they have enough parking.”

Referring to an earlier study session on guidelines for Greenlight,

the city’s new slow-growth law, Glover voiced her concern that Newport

Beach might not be as open to businesses as it used to be.

“This whole hearing tonight has, to a certain extent, saddened me,”

she said. “I think this city needs to be proud of its businesses and

treat them with respect.”

Councilman Tod Ridgeway, who joined Glover and council members Steve

Bromberg and Gary Proctor in upholding the appeal, agreed.

“We have put these people in an awkward position over a restroom,” he

said. “This has been going on for two years, guys.”

A shared responsibility

The fact that Corona del Mar has a parking problem was one thing

everyone at the meeting agreed on.

And community leaders reminded council members that everyone had to

shoulder some responsibility, because city officials had allowed more and

more shops and restaurants to open along East Coast Highway.

“Somehow we’ve all helped this situation come along,” said Don

Glasgow, the chairman of Corona del Mar’s business improvement district.

“We’ve got to get in there and figure out what we’re doing,” he said.

“We together helped create the problem.”

Cool said last week that he wanted to work with other business owners

to figure out possible parking deals. Another solution might be to change

street sweeping times along the highway’s side streets from morning to

afternoon, thereby adding more parking spaces during rush hour.

But several days after council members had made their decision on the

store, Cool said he still wasn’t sure what conditions he had to fulfill.

With $50,000 already spent on leasing the empty store next door for

the past year (a makeshift restroom already exists there for Starbucks

customers) and a proposed $150,000 renovation, Cool said company

executives might not approve the deal if city officials could revoke the

permit after an annual review.

Cool also complained that he’d discovered several other restaurants in

the city that didn’t provide restrooms to its customers.

“We’re the ones that the city seems to be going after,” he said.

But city officials said this was simply the way things worked.

“There’s no way that city staff can be aware of 100% of what’s going

on out there,” said Assistant City Manager Sharon Wood. “When we become

aware, it’s our duty to deal with it.”

‘Vision’ thing

Some in Corona del Mar say that solving the area’s parking problem was

one of the most pressing issues in the area.

Edward Selich, the chair of the city’s Planning Commission, also

coordinates a plan to bring the highway under city control. Vision 2004,

as the project is known, plans to turn Corona del Mar’s main traffic

artery into a pedestrian-oriented shopping and dining area.

While Selich said the group’s efforts focused on discussions with

Caltrans about the transfer of control, he said that “once we get further

along, we’re jumping head over heels into a parking program.

“To a large degree, we’re a victim of our own success,” Selich said,

adding that only an areawide parking district or parking authority could

solve the problem.

“We can’t expect to solve Corona del Mar’s parking problem on a

business-by-business basis,” he said.

Wood said the Vision 2004 project, which includes residents and

business owners, would probably be the best way to address the issue.

“It is a problem that is common in any kind of downtown setting,” she

said, adding that business owners across the harbor on Balboa Peninsula

were “just dying to have some business come down there.”

Now that Corona del Mar has become a shopping and dining destination,

it is finding that it traded one set of challenges for another.

“When [an area] takes off, it snowballs,” she said. “It’s gotten

successful, and there’s a need to deal with that success.”