Anaheim Planning Commission meeting for June 5, 2023

The Anaheim Planning Commission has a scheduled meeting on June 5, 2023 at 5:00pm in the city council chambers. The agenda for the meeting is available online.

Once again, there is only one item on the agenda, a CUP amendment for the expansion of a bar.

Item 1 - CUP Amendment - The Cave Sports Bar

The Cave Sports Bar is located on Orangewood Avenue, west of Harbor Blvd. It’s located in a small strip retail center at the end of a residential block. The request is to amend the bar’s existing CUP to allow it to expand into the neighboring vacant retail space. This center is mostly vacant, other than this bar that was originally approved in 1978, and a Mexican restaurant. The property is designated in the General Plan for Medium Density Residential development, although the zoning is General Commercial.

This mismatch between the General Plan and Zoning designations concerns me. On the one hand, zoning says this is a permitted use. On the other hand, the long-term vision for this property is for residential uses. I do wonder how many parcels throughout the city have land use and zoning designations that don’t match. It seems like these two planning documents should be consistent with one another. It would be a simple matter to change the zoning to match the designated land use and allow the existing uses to remain as existing non-conforming. Doing so would probably not even affect this request.

With all of that said, in a housing crisis, it seems like it would be better public policy for this property to convert to residential uses sooner rather than later. However, allowing this bar to expand will result is less pressure on the property owner to do something else with the property. The minor investment in the property by the bar will need to be amortized over several years, and the property owner will be generating more rent so will be less likely to sell or redevelop. The question becomes whether we should allow this investment, locking in the current use for the foreseeable future, or disallow this request to encourage the future land use to develop.

On another note, just something that is interesting, is that this is the first development that I’ve seen that has been exempt from parking requirements due to AB 2097. Not that it would matter for this request, since the site has plenty of parking for the existing tenants, but if the site ever does redevelop it’ll be interesting to see what sort of parking is provided on the site.