San Diego’s Pacific Beach neighborhood is known for its nightlife, and now one restaurant and bar has gotten the first approval to expand in a big way.

Waterbar cleared an important hurdle on Wednesday in its quest to expand its establishment to include a rooftop space.

The city of San Diego’s Development Services Department approved a Coastal Development Permit. The action laid the groundwork for the business to begin the process of applying for other permits and developing Waterbar’s rooftop.

“This is basically the permit from the city to build it, and then from there, you know, we still have a process to go through that’s afforded by the city to complete the project in terms of where we can start to do construction,” said Todd Brown, co-owner of Waterbar.

Brown envisions what the rooftop may potentially look like in the future.

“The views are phenomenal, both, you know, obviously out to the ocean and the sunset, but looking east, you see Mount Soledad, and it’s pretty awesome up there,” Brown said.

The actions aren’t without some pushback from people in the community.

“We’re very concerned about the expansion of alcohol consumption in Pacific Beach,” resident Scott Chipman said. “It’s well proven that in high alcohol consuming areas, neighborhoods that have 29 alcohol licenses where three is supposed to be allowed by state policy, those neighborhoods always have much higher crime than neighborhoods that don’t.”

At Wednesday’s hearing, city staff said that for the permit that was under consideration, they followed the land development code and told the project’s critics they should take up the fight with the Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission.

Despite the opposition, Brown says he and his colleagues have also received a lot of support from the community.

“We’ve received a tremendous amount of support from the Pacific Beach community and the business community, residents,” Brown said.

Brown said there are more hurdles to clear before the project comes to fruition, but he is excited they passed the most recent step.

“I’m excited, but we’ve got a long way to go,” Brown said.