ENCINITAS – Restaurant Row eateries may soon be able to legitimately collect a fee for valet service to relieve their parking crunch.
The Encinitas City Council voted unanimously Wednesday night to draft an amendment to reverse an old city law requiring restaurants along South Coast Highway 101 in Cardiff to provide free valet parking.
The amendment would legalize what is apparently an unauthorized practice by some restaurants along the busy roadway of charging diners for valet service.
City officials don't know when restaurants began charging for the service, but the Chart House, Charlie's by the Sea, the Beach House and Yogi's Beach Bar and Restaurant collect $3 per car.
“And gratuities are welcome,” a receptionist at the Beach House said yesterday.
The council told city staff members to consider three options:
Allow all businesses in the city to collect a fee for valet parking.
Allow only certain businesses, such as those along Restaurant Row, to collect a valet parking fee.
Require all businesses that want to charge customers for valet parking to apply for a permit, which the city would consider on a case-by-case basis.
The city's planning director, Pat Murphy, said he expects to present a proposed amendment to the 1989 ordinance to the Planning Commission in January; it would then go before the City Council. Murphy said a new regulation could take effect a year from now.
In the meantime, he said, the city will allow restaurants that already charge for valet service to continue doing so.
“What they are doing could be in violation of the code, but they have been collecting for a long time,” Murphy said. “We aren't going to go after individual restaurants. Our time will be spent on amending the law.”
Restaurant Row was built before Encinitas was incorporated in 1986. As the restaurants became more popular, lines of cars waiting for a parking spot got longer, holding up traffic along South Coast Highway 101.
In September, some of the restaurant owners and a managing partner of Pacific Coast Valet, which provides valet service to some eateries along Restaurant Row, asked the council to legalize charging a fee for the service.
In a petition to the council in September, owners of some restaurants along Restaurant Row and in other parts of Encinitas also said complimentary valet service was cost-prohibitive.
They said they need to collect a fee not only to recover costs but to staff their parking lots to discourage beach-goers from using the lots rather than paying $8 for parking at nearby Cardiff State Beach.
Angela Lau: (760) 476-8240; angela.lau@uniontrib.com
