Battle over outdoor dining roils Larchmont Boulevard

When Larchmont Bungalow opened a couple of weeks ago, the “Artisan Cafe, Bakery and Brew” coffeehouse seemed a perfect fit for the tony neighborhood, with its exposed wooden beams, reconditioned hardwood floors and roasting coffee wafting through the airy space.

But there was just one problem — and it had everything to do with the chairs and tables where patrons sat, drank coffee and noshed on offerings such as red velvet pancakes and jerk chicken sliders.

Those chairs and tables, a group of residents says, threaten the very fabric of Larchmont Village because they transformed what had been permitted as a take-out restaurant into something vastly different.

Because the business offers patrons a place to sit and eat, they said, it knowingly violates a series of longstanding ordinances for the neighborhood known as “Q conditions” that, among other things, limit the number of restaurants in the shopping district. Plans for the business showed retail and a bakery — but not tables and chairs.

The controversy underscores a long-simmering battle on the boulevard that L.A. City Councilman Tom LaBonge, who represents the area, calls “our American Main Street.” Read more here: 

Photo: Tables and chairs outside Larchmont Bungalow are tagged for sale.

Credit: Richard DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times

Comments

[Joe Shea]

LA's streets are pathetic for their lack of outdoor cafes. For instance, even in Tehran, all the high-rises on Reza Pahlavi Blvd. so much like the ones along Wilshire Blvd. in Westwood, had big restaurants and outdoor cafes on the lobby floors and they were crowded until mid-to-late evening with well-dressed, affluent, cheerful people. The rotten goons of extremist Islam brought all that to a screeching halt. Here in this country, where LA's streets are mostly empty of pedestrians in the more affleunt areas of the West Side, why make the Ayatollah's mistake? Keep the streets alive and you keep freedom alive. Let them be seated!