Over the years, I’ve heard horror stories from small-business owners about their dealings with the city of Tucson in general, and the city inspection process in particular.
This isn’t one of those stories.
Emma Vera owns the ridiculously popular Guadalajara Original Grill on Prince Road, near Mountain Avenue. Just last week, the restaurant celebrated its 10th anniversary. After humble beginnings at a hole in the wall a few blocks east on Prince, she moved to the current location and quickly built her dream project into one of the most successful restaurants in all of Southern Arizona.
(It must be mentioned that I coached her daughter, Maya, in high school basketball and track. Maya is an A student and an all-around great kid who was all-state in basketball, and won the state high jump championship her sophomore and senior seasons in track.)
While Vera was certainly pleased with the popularity of her establishment, she wanted to do more for her patrons. She wanted to put a patio out front for open-air dining during the nice times of the year (and during the evenings of the not-so-nice times of the year). She already owned the property, and the only disruption would be that the patio would take the place of a few parking spaces adjacent to Prince Road.
This is where Lloyd Christmas, Inspector Clouseau and Mr. Bean begin to make their appearances.
According to the city code, there is an established ratio of parking spaces to square footage of the restaurant. (I’m certainly not hating on the existence of city code. I’ve been to places where the rules are lax or even nonexistent. Houston, for example, has no zoning whatsoever. I’ve been to a Popeye’s Chicken that’s right next to a church, which I guess makes for competing houses of worship.) However, it doesn’t seem like it’s asking too much to have a municipal code tempered with a little common sense.
Finding enough parking has always been a concern at Vera’s restaurant; all things considered, it’s actually a nice problem to have. She hires extra people on the weekends just to help facilitate parking. She has an agreement with the businesses adjacent to her restaurant (that close down at the end of the business day and/or are closed on the weekends). She rents parking space from the Casa de los Niños Thrift Shop on the other side of Mountain, paying a weekly fee and feeding the Casa workers on Wednesday. She even went door to door in the adjoining neighborhood, asking whether spillover parking would be a concern to anybody.
Kinda sounds like the type of business person that the city would go to great lengths to support in any way possible. You might think.
At first, the inspectors weren’t even sure how many parking spaces were required, because it wasn’t clear whether a storage facility out back should be counted as part of the square footage. Her initial plans were rejected, because she was told that there was no way that she could eliminate the parking spaces in front. She countered with a plan to reconfigure the parking area in the back of the restaurant, adding spaces to make up for those that would be lost to the patio construction. This is where it gets fun.
She was told that she couldn’t add two parking spaces, in particular, because they would interfere with another form of commerce: It was determined the garbage trucks that pick up the restaurant’s trash have a certain turning radius that would force the trucks to cross over at least one of the proposed parking spaces in order to get to the bins. Vera explained that the trucks make their pickups at or before 9 a.m., and the restaurant doesn’t open until 10, so there’s no way those spaces would ever be occupied at that time. (The restaurant is popular, but it’s not that popular.)
This went on for four maddening years. Vera went through a string of expensive architects, each of whom quit in frustration after running headlong into the city’s Wall of NO! She even hired a lawyer to try to walk the paperwork through the city labyrinth. He gave up, too, and then sent her a bill for a few thousand dollars for his “troubles.”
Finally, as a long shot, she had a third party mention her situation to new Tucson Mayor Jonathan Rothschild. The mayor placed a call to Ernie Duarte, who is the city’s director of planning and development services, and Duarte met with Vera.
The patio should be open by the first week of October, just in time for the nice weather.
“Mr. Duarte and his staff have been wonderful,” Vera says. “It has been a pleasure working with them.”
For his part, Rothschild would like to view this as a small signal of the beginning of what could be a new era in the city of Tucson’s approach to constituent services. While I couldn’t get him on the phone by press time, I assume that he would also prefer that people with concerns not call him first and then hope that the (stuff) would flow downhill. However, that is the way it happened in this case.
This article appears in Sep 6-12, 2012.
It’s about freakin’ time that the City gets off of whatever it was they were sitting on and actually work FOR the people. What a concept. Thank you Mr. Mayor, Mr. Duarte and staff for giving this wonderful woman a break (not to mention the patrons of this wonderful restaurant).
The City of Tucson tried to ticket me 3 times for my wildflower garden in my front yard, which is mostly beautiful Parry Penstemon, asters, cactus, Arizona Yellow Bells and nutrious wolfberries. Rather than chose to fight in court I invited the head of the department to my yard for a class in wildflowers. She didn’t even know what a penstemon was. They don’t bother me anymore. My neighbors love the flowers. So do hummingbirds, moths, bees and unfortunately rabbits.
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ !!
This has to be one of the frivolous pieces our admirable editor has ever published.
A restaurant review, for pity’s sake?
I write that, because, what I’d like to read more here, is whether Tucson is really serious about its becoming a sort of “sanctuary city.”
I’d like to know that, Mr. Danehy, because yesterday afternoon, I met 4 desperate “illegals” – up from Oaxaca – in the valley below my home here in Rio Rico. I drove up to my home to bring them down food and water.
After handshakes and hugs, those grateful, dreaded “illegals” insisted on heading up along the Union Pacific RR toward Tucson. Despite all I told them about how long and dangerous trek it is.
This quartet of fiercely determined folk will – guaranteed! – arrive in Tucson.
But what I most want to know, Mr. Danehy, if you think they will be welcomed there.
So if it wasn’t Duarte’s staff causing the original trouble who was it? Who is responsible for the city code if not Duarte’s group? Clearly the mayor get the credit because if it hadn’t been for the phone call it would have never happened. It doesn’t sound like the code changed it sounds like the hammer came down. Good try Danehy to save Duarte’s reputation (who has been in charge of development for oh almost a decade now existing code and all).
Too bad GG serves Gringo Mexican food at best. Canned tomatoes for their table-side salsa, with canned jalapenos to boot. I went there for drinks only, after vowing to NEVER again put my lips to their inferior food. My friend ordered the salsa and man – I cannot believe this place is so popular with the abundance of real Mexican food here! Just goes to show ya – Tucson’s taste in food is definitely up their A$$.
Just wanted to clarify that the most wonderful Emma feeds the children (not the workers) at Casa de los Niños shelter every other Wednesday night..she’s been doing this for years. The kids love it! And we appreciate it! M. Johns, Casa de los Niños
We finally have a working Mayor. This guy is so great, has worked so hard since being in office. I wish the city employees would take a few pointer from him. Also the city council needs some teaching too. They are all against Tucson and it growth and changes. Tucson will really grow and process under Mayor Rothschild.
I have heard business people tell how difficult it is to get anything done with the current public employees. They are not for process or helping people. They are for say NO. Ops, that is what the Republicans do. Thanks Mayor Rothschild for all your hard work. We in Tucson appreciate what you are doing.
It’s too bad she went through four years with incompetent architects who didn’t know how to deal with the City. If they had any idea what the first one went through, why wasn’t Duarte called before their first review?
The second problem is that the City Code is rigid, and until they make it flexible or give the reviewers at the counter some lee-way, you’ll never get anything that doesn’t meet the Code to a “T” to go through without marching it up the chain of command. There is no flexibility in the Code so there is no flexibility possible within the review.
It is worth noting that the East Side location has had a sign up which states “patio coming soon” for quite a while itself.