MDK Restaurant Developers and Off the Hook made their final pitches to develop the restaurant space at the end of the Seal Beach Pier last week.
The presentations were made during the public comment segment of the meeting prior to the City Council’s closed session on Monday, March 10. Closed sessions usually take place before the open council session. The public also gets a chance to comment at the open session, which is usually televised.
Joe McKettrick, the principle of MDK, told the Sun that his company had been in the process of negotiating for the pier space for more than a year. McKettrick is a former Seal Beach resident for 10 years who now resides in Huntington Harbour.
Off the Hook’s offer was presented to the open session of the City Council on Feb. 10, when Randy Hiatt, a representative of Fessel International, pitched a proposal from the owner of Original Fish Company. Wendy Rothman, owner of OFC, is a Seal Beach resident.
According to the mission statement that MDK provided to Seal Beach, the developers proposed a two-story building called the Sand Castle. The ground floor would feature two “counter service concepts,” DiNic’s and the House Counter Service Menu.
There would be an outdoor dining area on the ground floor.
The second floor feature would be the Sand Castle Restaurant. The second floor restaurant would also have a rooftop dining area.
The previous occupant of the restaurant space, Ruby’s Diner, was reportedly supposed to build an outdoor dining area but never did. Ruby’s applied for a permit to build one and asked for an extension when that permit expired, but the area was never built.
Off the Hook’s pier space development proposal was also for a two-story building with one restaurant on each floor of a new building that would replace the one that housed Ruby’s Diner until January 2013.
The upstairs restaurant would be OFC Off the Hook, and the downstairs would be OFC Quick.
The city’s request for proposals included a community service project. The MDK mission statement for Sand Castle offered to work together with the community “on many of the annual scheduled events: The Car Show, Summer Concerts in the Park, Seal Beach Run 5K/10K, etc.”
Off the Hook has proposed bringing tram service back to the pier.
“We laid down the template and everybody took it from there,” McKettrick said.
McKettrick said that the city called him personally last year when officials did not received as many responses as they wished to their request for business proposals for the pier space. He said it was “surprising” when another competitor came in later in the process.
McKettrick said MDK had negotiated a deal, but then city officials told him that they could not go forward in good conscience while they were still negotiating the city’s lease for the pier.
Seal Beach owns the restaurant space at the end of the pier, but the city does not own the pier itself.
McKettrick said he waited six months for the city to renegotiate the pier lease with state officials.
“They had a full package on what we were doing,” McKettrick said.
No reportable action took place at the closed session of the March 10 City Council meeting.
Jim Basham, Seal Beach director of Community Development, said the pier development was a closed session item and he could not provide an update.
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