SAN DIEGO (FOX 5/KUSI) — San Diego city’s budget crisis is being felt all over town, not by city workers, but by residents trying to park during a special event and soon to be felt by the hotel and restaurant industry.
“Look I understand the city is a bad place financially and they are looking for ways to make that up, but they are leaning on an industry that’s hanging on by shoestrings,” said Eric Christiansen from the Guava Bar and Grill in Mission Beach.
City staff is going to present San Diego’s city council with raising valet fees from $600 a year for a parking space to $5,600 a year for a parking space — that goes for street dining in a “streetery” as well. Staff members say this is because the city loses the parking meter revenue from restaurants and hotels taking up city spaces for their own businesses.
“The cost of doing business is going nowhere but up,” Christiansen said.
In downtown. restaurant owners say the adversarial relationships between restaurants and owners has hurt the dining scene in the Gaslamp District as well.
“Fine dining and dining in downtown is not the same,” said Giogino Gargano, the owner of Romanissimo.
Gargano says downtown has turned from fine cuisine to tacos and pizza, because city fees have made sit-down dinners less affordable, pushing people to walk around while eating.
“They go to La Jolla, they go little Italy. They go to a different area. Downtown is not doing well,” Gargano said.
“A lending hand would be helpful to us, something for them to actualize. To me, it seems like the city is a little tone deaf to the predicament that restaurants, in particular, are in because the cost of doing business has risen so exponentially,” Christiansen said.
Want more insights? Join Working Title - our career elevating newsletter and get the future of work delivered weekly.
