Redondo Beach staff seek council subcommittee to speed business permitting and retention

City staff on Tuesday told the Redondo Beach City Council that a Business Concierge program launched in 2022 has improved coordination across departments and helped a string of businesses open faster, and they asked the council to appoint members to an economic development working group that will recommend further regulatory and process changes.

The Business Concierge program was created after business owners and developers reported permitting processes that were fragmented and slow. Greg Kapovich, the city’s waterfront and economic development director, said the program has worked to provide a single point of contact, to improve interdepartmental communications and to develop an online business-concierge web page and appointment scheduling so applicants know up front which permits they need.

Dave Scribe, a staff member who has worked directly with the program, described new tools and recent successes. He told council that the program has supported roughly 26 businesses since it began and has implemented kiosks at City Hall, cross-departmental tracking meetings, and an integrated permitting rollout intended to give applicants real‑time status updates. “We implemented these key initiatives to improve that user experience,” Scribe said in his update to the council.

Scribe gave three examples of when city staff intervention sped openings or preserved events: El Torito / Cal Mex Cantina, where staff helped get a missing utility meter replaced on a schedule that allowed the restaurant to open on time; a café project that had safety- and compliance-related stop-work concerns and was guided back into compliance; and a Sonesta Hotel event that required an unusually fast event‑permit turnaround.

Staff asked the council to create an economic development working group composed of city staff, business and community partners (Chamber of Commerce, Riviera Village, NRBBA and others) and to appoint two council members to a formal council subcommittee to work with that group. The proposed subcommittee would review regulations that require discretionary approvals (for example, conditional use permits), parking standards and internal procedural bottlenecks and would provide policy guidance as staff bring forward specific ordinance or process-change proposals.

Council members broadly supported the idea and discussed how to staff the subcommittee and rotate membership over time. Several council members volunteered interest in serving; the staff presentation noted that a formal appointment process and a codifying resolution would follow if the council directed staff to proceed.

A motion to receive and file the staff report carried.

What’s next: Staff will return with a formal resolution if the council wants a standing subcommittee, a proposed membership-selection process, and a detailed plan for the integrated permitting software rollout and associated budgets. Staff also said they will conduct customer‑service surveys and targeted outreach to local business associations to gather further input.