By Clarence Cromwell
Patio dining on what's now the Chart House restaurant's lawn drew a firm no from the Planning Commission Feb. 26.
The Chart House--the restaurant in the imposing Victorian at 115 N. Santa Cruz Ave.-- proposed an elegant 30-seat elevated dining area between the building and the sidewalk.
Planners returned the restaurant application to the Development Review Committee, square one in the planning process, after a handful of neighbors in the nearby Almond Grove historical district complained that the outdoor seats would pester them with noise and increase parking and trash pickup problems at the restaurant.
Acoustical consultant Jeffrey Pack told commissioners that patio noise couldn't possibly reach the houses behind the restaurant. The noise couldn't travel over or around the building to reach neighbors in the rear, he said, and any noise reflecting off buildings across the street would have to travel so far before reaching residential areas that it would fade out along the way.
Further, he added, diners could be expected to generate about 20-30 decibels of noise, compared to an existing noise level of 30-40 db in most places downtown.
Commissioners nevertheless refused the project.
Pack said any difference in noise levels would be a couple of decibels reaching the neighbors' property, detectable only with a sound meter.
"It is really a very small amount," he said. "It will be inaudible."
Almond Grove resident Joseph Riggio said he met with four other neighbors the week before the meeting and learned that they also opposed the project.
Neighbors don't want outdoor seating because of the noise they fear it will generate, Riggio said. They also believe the renovation will generate more customers, thereby worsening noise problems associated with the restaurant's trash pickup and with diners who use its back parking lot.
Commissioners appeared concerned about the noise as well.
Commissioners Marcia Jensen and Len Pacheco grilled Pack, the consultant and Chart House owners about noise problems and the possibility of silencing the proposed patio with dense landscaping or an overhead trellis. Pack said plants won't block the noise.
Mike Abkin made the motion to send the proposal back to the DRC, saying he opposed the outdoor seating, mostly because of noise; he also opposed covering the entire lot with structural improvements.
"I thought it was just trying to pack too much in there, and then with the impact on residences behind, it just wasn't worth it," he said in a phone interview the following day.
Laura Nachison dissented, after saying the neighbors' concerns about noise could have been addressed in the conditional-use permit the restaurant was applying for.
Commissioner Kathryn Morgan was absent from the meeting.
The Chart House submitted plans for the renovation along with a routine request for a permit to run the restaurant.
The restaurant must get a conditional-use permit by the end of August to keep the operation legal; a 1977 ordinance mandated CUPs for restaurants and gave them 20 years to apply.
The project would have expanded the restaurant kitchen and moved 30 seats onto the patio. It would not have added new seats or parking spaces to the restaurant.
Lewis Jackson, vice president of development for the restaurant's parent company, CHE Inc., said at last week's meeting that the restaurant will renovate, even if it can't build the patio.
"We're going to do something," Jackson said. "The restaurant needs to have something done."
The Chart House application is scheduled for DRC review March 26.
This article appeared in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, March 5, 1997.
©1997 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.