Fifth in a series.
The City Council discussed food service at the end of the Seal Beach Pier during the 2024 Strategic Planning meeting. The meeting consultant suggested that staff come back to the council with cost estimates.
No formal action was taken.
The five-hour meeting featured sometimes meandering conversations. For example, the discussion of the swimming pool moved into a discussion of food service on the pier before returning to the pool project.
“With regard to the food service on the pier, we’ve never really reached decision whether that’s yes or no,” said District One Council Member Joe Kalmick.
He said he saw three different proposals: a restaurant, a food truck, and shipping containers that could be paid for out of the existing insurance money.
“So there’s a couple of things that we can make decisions about without encumbering monies that we haven’t gotten,” Kalmick said.
District Five Council Nathan Steele was concerned that existing funds were losing their buying power.
“My concern is we have pools of money laying around for a lot of different things and those pools of money are shrinking,” Steele said.
“I’m not saying we should make a decision about any of these things but it’s hard to make a decision about one thing in the absence of knowing what the whole buffet is,” Steele said. (Editor’s note: He said the word “buffet,” not budget.)
Steele said he didn’t know how much flexibility the council had with the money that had been set aside.
There was a brief discussion of revenue opportunities.
Later, the conversation returned to food service on the pier.
Kalmick said the city had $1.4 million sitting there.
(The Adopted Seal Beach budget for FY 2023-24 reports $1,395,638 in funds committed and assigned for a pier restaurant.)
“If we wind up with a consensus whether we involve the entire community again to where people say, ‘yeah we want food service on the pier,’ then we come up with a plan that we can afford,” Kalmick said.
According to Kalmick, if there was a consensus that there would be no food service on the pier, the city could do what it wanted with the $1.4 million.
Carol Jacobs of Baker Tilly, who was leading the Strategic Planning meeting, said the other issue with the pier, according to Seal Beach staff, was that the city had $1.4 million but it was going to cost $3 million or something like that.
“At the time that we were getting ready to make the presentation the public with the boards and the renderings, that was going to be presented with a ‘but we can’t afford’ notation,” Kalmick said.
“Okay, so you’re talking about something like a Snack Shack or some kind of small food service or ice cream stand or something,” Jacobs said.
“One of the ideas was this: Using shipping containers,” Kalmick said. Kalmick said Long Beach called it SteelCraft.
The SteelCraft website describes the concept as eateries built with repurposed shipping containers. According to the website, there are SteelCraft locations in Bellflower and garden Grove as well as Long Beach.
Kalmick described the idea as two 20 by 40 foot container modules with a view down the center.
Jacobs said nobody voted for a restaurant on the pier, apparently referring to the point in the meeting when council members placed dots next to items on a list of priorities. (See “Seal Beach City Council prioritizes projects at annual planning meeting,” Sun Newspapers, Feb. 8, 2024, at sunnews.org.)
District Four Council Member/Mayor Schelly Sustarsic said she was torn by that one.
“If you said food service, I might have,” said Kalmick, apparently referring to voting.
“That’s why we have this discussion,” Jacobs said.
There was a brief conversation about the California Coastal Commission. The agency has historically required coastal development permits for anything done in the coastal zone.
The conversation turned back to costs.
Kalmick said at the time, talking with consultants, going back to almost three years ago, that to build that out, including portable bathrooms was about $800,000, which he put at about $2 million now.
Sustarsic said when she drives past SteelCraft, they always look busy. She also said they looked generic so if one restaurant left, another could just move in.
Kalmick said he thought Long Beach had one with tacos, one’s beer, one’s coffee. He said you could lease the containers or have a contract with a vendor and they could put in whatever cooking facility they wanted.
“What about this,” Jacobs said.
“What about we put this back on the table; we let staff come back with some kind of cost estimate on that,” Jacobs said.
