Tag Archives: Wharf

Wharf Businesses Evicted

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This will change the old Fishermans Wharf atmosphere as Canner Row style tourist traps take over the wharf.

wharf night

Monterey’s Housing and Property Manager Rick Marvin confirmed that Balesteri’s Wharf Front gift shop, the Paluca Trattoria Italian restaurant and The Coffee House, all located on the wharf and part of property leased by Sam Balesteri, had been sent lease termination letters notifying them that their current leases were up at the end of the month.

Last year the Monterey City Council voted to shorten lease agreements with wharf tenants. Since the new guidelines, the city has negotiated with three existing tenants and has offered lease terms that exceed 10 years due to the improvements the tenants want to make to the premises.

Wharf Businesses Evicted

Car Haters Planning To Rip Out Wharf Parking

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They say parking lots are not useful. Sorry fishermen and pleasure boaters, you’ll need to hike over to Franklin street to get your parked truck & trailer.

And Festival Space? There’s this huge plaza right next to the Customs house. Is it too not “useful”?

The purpose of the plan is to guide improvements of Monterey’s waterfront. The plan’s draft, according to the city’s principal planner Elizabeth Caraker, emphasizes more usable space and makes it easier for pedestrians to navigate the area. It includes regulations for both the Fisherman’s Wharf and municipal wharf businesses and makes parking changes. It has been embraced by the Planning, Parks and Recreation, and Historic Preservation commissions.

“Overall, participants said they wanted more useable space where the parking lots are,” said Caraker. “So the re-design would serve to include more temporary event or festival space. There would be better circulation for pedestrians and bicycles and better access to parking in the downtown garages when the waterfronts are full.”

Car Haters Planning To Rip Out Wharf Parking

Divers Find It Deeper

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Challenge accepted and met.

Recently the couple was leaving a restaurant at Wharf 2 in Monterey, when Susan accidentally knocked her purse into the water.

“When it first went over the railing, to be honest with you, I wanted to go in after it,” Susan said. “I never expected to see it again. I just went to work and thought, ‘Well, that’s it.’ ”

But Ron wasn’t about to give up. After all, the purse contained $200 in cash, the keys to their car, worth about $250, house keys, a pair of prescription sunglasses worth $400, plus credit cards and personal identification.

About a week later, Glaze went to the end of the pier to buy salmon at the seafood market. Right next to the market is Monterey Abalone Co., which raises abalone in cages under the wharf.

“There was this guy in a wetsuit,” Glaze said. “I asked him … does he know this harbor pretty well?

“‘Oh yeah,’ the man said. ‘I’m down in the water here a lot.’ ”

The man was Andrew Kim, manager of Monterey Abalone Co. He took down Glaze’s name, address and phone number and agreed to try to keep an eye out for the purse while diving.

The next evening the Glazes were in Los Altos when Ron received a call from Kim. “He said, ‘Ron, I found your wife’s purse and it doesn’t look too bad. It’s still zipped up.’ ”

Divers Find It Deeper

Spectacular Gateway For Monterey. Just Step Back 30 Years.

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What? Tear out all the parking and marina improvements to remake a beach that is likely to become a transient plaza for sea lions?

Wharfs 1960s

The waterfront plan, which has been put together during the past four years, is intended to transform Monterey’s shoreline between San Carlos Beach and Monterey Bay Park into a “spectacular gateway” for the city.

But many in the wharf business community say the proposal — which would eliminate hundreds of parking spaces in lots nearest the harbor by the city’s two wharves in favor of grass, walkways and a plaza — is anything but spectacular.

At a city Planning Commission meeting May 13, the battle over the future of waterfront parking under the proposed plan came to a head.

Wharf business owners and hospitality industry officials predicted the changes would drive away customers and cost the city hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in parking fees generated by the wharf lots.

Spectacular Gateway For Monterey. Just Step Back 30 Years

Wharf Restaurant Bans Babies

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Admin here once worked in some P.G. food establishments. When cleaning up after messy “families” I wished there was an added charge for cleaning up after the rug rats.

no child restaurant

“I think it’s ridiculous,” tourist Teresa Colombani said. “I think kids need to know how to behave in restaurants, and if you, don’t take them to them, they don’t know how to behave and they shouldn’t be kept hidden away, so I think it’s ridiculous, kids should be allowed in restaurants.”

The owner of the restaurant, Chris Shake, said if customers don’t like the rules, they can go somewhere else for dinner.

Shake said not only does he stand by the signs, but said his business has never been better.

“Well let’s put it this way, I haven’t had a down year for over 20 years,” Shake said. “Our business continues to grow.”

Wharf Restaurant Bans Babies

Plaza Bocce Ball Courts To Be Torn Out

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And replaced with something that can get more use. Like another Maritime Museum?

Bocce ball enthusiasts on the other hand, want to improve the courts so they can get more use and even attract events.
Bikini Bocce

Our plan? We take out the existing courts, shorten the length of courts 1 and 2 to conform to the 86 foot length of court 3, and install the court surfaces that made the Colleoni Sports Facility business the premier artificial court installer in the world. All at our expense.

We tried to accommodate the desires of State Parks, presenting updated requests addressing new questions after answering old ones. To no avail. It was almost as if they already had their answer all along, but gave us hope by allowing us yet another audience with them. Then came their final “no.” Our hopes of having world class bocce courts at the Custom House Plaza are gone.

Footnote: Monterey Mayor Chuck Della Sala told Bob Enea that State Parks Ranger Eric Abma informed him that within 10 years, the existing courts will be torn out and the land put to other use because the courts as they currently are don’t receive the use State Parks would like to see. Quite ironic, I’d say. Arrivederci Custom House Plaza Bocce Courts.

Plaza Bocce Ball Courts To Be Torn Out

Rappa’s Closed

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City is against consolidation.

The Monterey City Council on Tuesday will consider taking final action to deny the transfer of a wharf lease for Rappa’s Seafood Restaurant from Anthony Rappa to would-be buyer James Gilbert, who has three other wharf restaurants.

Rappa, who has been running the restaurant since 1980, said Thursday that he hopes the council decides otherwise.

“What they are doing is counterproductive,” said Rappa, who at age 79 wants to retire. He said Gilbert has the money to make badly needed improvements to the property, along with plans to make it a “destination location.”

The restaurant sits in a good location near the end of the wharf, with a second-level observation deck overlooking the harbor.

Rappa’s Closed

Fisherman’s Wharf Cracks Down On Signs

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Better yet is my idea to legalize them and license them – after all they are advertising on public property.

Wharf signs

Officials and restaurant owners hope clearing the thoroughfare will lessen the amount of “chowder barking” — the practice of loudly offering free cups of clam chowder to visitors — on the wharf. The intrusive practices of chowder samplers are a major point of contention among competing wharf restaurant owners and the subject of visitor complaints.
. . . .
A local businessman gave Sabu Shake, who died in 1998, the life-size wooden statue of himself wearing a white cowboy hat and white suit.

“It’s been there a long time,” said Bob Massaro, the administrator for the Fisherman’s Wharf Association. “Folks stand beside it and get their picture taken. He was sort of a character, wore a cowboy hat all the time. Just a nice congenial person.”

Tom Gawel, general manager of Rappa’s Seafood Restaurant on the wharf, said he was asked to removed flower pots from the front of his restaurant. He plans to comply.

Fisherman’s Wharf Cracks Down On Signs