Symmzy's Latenight Hours for Alcohol Up for Vote

Alcohol and marijuana are the big issues on tonight's Long Beach City Council agenda that will impact Belmont Shore. And while the fate of medical marijuana dispensaries does effect the whole city, alcohol sales on Second Street typically matters most intensely to Belmont Shore.

On tap is the request for an alcohol sales license by Manhattan Beach restaurant chain Symmzy's, which wants to open a restaurant where the ShoreHouse Cafe operated until recently. The co-owner, Mike Simms, made his case last week at the monthly Belmont Shore Residents Assn. meeting, where the conversation was cordial and concerns were expressed. He also met Monday night at Third District Councilman Gary DeLong's field office on Nieto, where the room was filled and again, the dialogue was civil.

Some residents voiced support for the business wanting to serve alcohol until midnight while others expressed concern that it adds 14 hours a week more than other licensees--Quinn's Pub, Me Soo Hungry, to name a few--that must stop serving at 10 p.m.

The inconsistency, said Quinn's pub owner Alexis Rabenn, is unfair to other businesses. And a few attendees of both meetings were disappointed that this vote comes before a report by city staff has been returned on how bar-related nuisances to the surrounding residential neighborhood might be reduced with changes in conditional use permits.

DeLong introduced the motion this summer, and the City Council approved it, following a graphic case in which a very drunk man tried to break into a home down the street from Panama Joe's, on the inland side of Granada near The Toledo. The family with kids inside witnessed the man continuing to try getting inside, and police having to tazer the man, who bled all over their entryway at 2 a.m.

DeLong said last week that he and the city owe it to the business to act in a timely manner. The restaurant owners, including a Belmont Shore mother and current chef who will be on-site three days a week, sell high-end beer that Simms told residents last week "is too expensive to get drunk on." They intend to spend $1 million in property upgrades for a 100-seat "upscale" gastro-pub and promised "to be a good neighbor."

Simms last week acknowledged that residents had been promised the same thing previously by other bar owners. And his partner, chef Anne Conness, who lives  near Prospect and First Street and has a son in Friday Night Lights football, said the same.

"I know you've been burned before by previous operators," she told residents at the Monday night meeting. "I want this to be a place you want to come to....I live here, too."