Update on Volunteer Park Cafe’s Neighbor Drama
DPD to determine whether the Cap Hill favorite can continue to operate at its current location.
Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Jun 30, 2010 at 09:57AM
3 Comments
Last week I wrote a post detailing Volunteer Park Cafe’s troubles with a neighbor who opposed the owners’ plans to start serving outdoors. To see if he couldn’t thwart the anticipated al fresco arrangement, the neighbor researched the property permits and found that the building had never been zoned as a cafe. It was zoned as a grocery store (which it once was).
Both Slog and the Capitol Hill Seattle Blog have reported further on the story. Slog’s Cienna Madrid identified the neighbor as Paul Jones (I guess I should stop referring to him as Mr. Roper), and talked to a rep from the Department of Planning and Development. From Madrid’s post:
“It’s a unique situation but not unheard of,” says DPD spokesman Bryan Stevens. Stevens explains that VPC is the only business operating in an area zoned for residential use. The cafe is housed in a building that was a grocery store a century ago, and the neighborhood essentially grew up around it. When the area was eventually zoned for residential use, the building was grandfathered in. “Technically, a store wouldn’t be allowed there now,” Stevens says.
So now, according to the article, the DPD will treat VPC as if it were a grocery store whose owners planned to turn it into a cafe, and thus they will determine whether Volunteer Park Cafe can continue to operate in its current location. Don’t expect anything to happen over night. CHS talked to Stevens too, and he told the blog that the process would take three to five months.
In closing, I think Madrid is a pretty cool last name.
I simply cannot believe that the neighbor in question would put his petty issues surrounding this small business above the jobs, livelihoods, and success of the women who have put blood sweat and tears into starting this cafe. The women who run this cafe and their employees have families to feed and bills to be paid. They have invested everything that they have in this dream. Shouldn’t we be praising and encouraging a small business that is actually a success in such a low point in our economy? Unbelievable to me that this neighbor wouldn’t even think about this. I would give anything to have such a nice cafe in my neighborhood. And oh…I saw the reported story on the news today claiming that there is now more trash in the neighborhood. That is a blatant lie. The cafe and surrounding area is immaculate and cute as can be. I used to be a housekeeper in the area and absolutely loved hanging out there before my shift. It made me feel like I was part of a very privileged part of Seattle, which I will never be able to afford. Maybe the neighbors want to keep it that way. I suggest THEY move to another part of the city. Sorry but you have decided to live in Capitol Hill. Capitol Hill belongs to everyone, not just rich homeowners. Move to Laurelhurst if you don’t want a vibrant neighborhood.
Ms. Voelker,
I agree with you. You “should stop referring to him as Mr. Roper).”
As a journalist, you are accountable for due diligence, and for separating gossip and opinion from verifiable facts.
Where is the obligatory “Paul Jones (I guess I should stop referring to him as Mr. Roper) declined to be interviewed for this article?” Or even “Paul Jones (I guess I should stop referring to him as Mr. Roper) could not be reached for comment.” It could not have been hard to find Paul Jones (I guess I should stop referring to him as Mr. Roper). The city requires contact information on a submitted complaints filed.
I’m not seeing that you had the professional standards to call DPD yourself. It appears you preferred to cut and paste information from a previous post like so much cat litter.
Unfortunately, you have placed your editors and publishers in the same unprofessional boat of: choosing to appear “with the band” cool by hobnobbing with a popular restaurant instead of looking for the real story.
How hard would it have been to reach out to Paul Jones (I guess I should stop referring to him as Mr. Roper). He lives right next door.
You owe him an apology.
Dear Tracy,
I hear you on this: “It made me feel like I was part of a very privileged part of Seattle, which I will never be able to afford.”
Before I moved to N. Capitol Hill, I spent a number of my 20 years in this city on the corner of Pike and Harvard in a studio with a efficiency kitchen and a shared bathroom in the hall. I would bike to work through this neighborhood, stare up at the wedding-cake houses, and wish. I am grateful everyday that I live where I do.
However, you write: “I simply cannot believe that the neighbor in question would put his petty issues surrounding this small business above the jobs, livelihoods, and success of the women who have put blood sweat and tears into starting this cafe.”
I agree that Ericka and Heather are hard-working. But hard-working does not make them above the law. They have illegally operated the cafe from the moment they moved in and built (without any permitting) a restaurant kitchen to the moment they (again without permitting) illegally broke ground on the patio extension that caused my neighbor to file the zoning complaint.
Have you noticed that rather that serving on the patio as soon as the work was complete, VPC served for a few days then stopped? That wasn’t us nasty neighbors. That was the city. The city reminded them that they had been found in violation of zoning regulations and that it was illegal for them to serve on the back patio until they came into compliance.
(For the record, the cafe had until July 1st to come into compliance. They did not file on time. They were given a second deadline, early September, which they also blew past, further delaying the public process that is the only way they can change from what is called ‘Grocery’ use to ‘An Eating and Drinking Establishment.’ The cafe filed their application last week. There is no way to estimate when the public process will begin. The city just announces it.)
You also write: “I saw the reported story on the news today claiming that there is now more trash in the neighborhood. That is a blatant lie. The cafe and surrounding area is immaculate and cute as can be.”
That would be out front. Out back, just this morning in fact, I saw crows ripping at the piles of plastic bags that daily overflow the garbage bins. This morning, some crows hopped away, dropping garbage along the alley. Other crows flew away, dropping garbage in my neighbor’s yard.
This is not a rare instance. The rats are so thick around their excessive garbage that I am too revolted to put out my own garbage at night. It’s too creepy.
Certainly, we had some rats around before the cafe’s business more than doubled. We never had this many rats. We never found dead ones in our yards before the cafe moved in.
VPC has a vision of their restaurant that is too big for this neighborhood. I don’t understand why they don’t continue to operate the little-coffee-shop-on-the-corner style place they opened originally — which everyone including me got behind — and find an additional space for the destination restaurant they have created and envision expanding.
I don’t appreciate it when people who do not live next door to VPC tell me that it is the right of the VPC to expand their scope of business regardless of the rule of law and of common sense; and that if I have a problem with the repercussions of VPC illegal and unkind behaviors, I should move to Laurelhurst or Bellevue, or any number of places I have been ordered to by cafe supporters.
Why shouldn’t the cafe move its destination-restaurant operation to a neighborhood that is zoned for restaurants?
Why didn’t the cafe at least understand that the building they were renting wasn’t properly zoned for the use they needed?
Why, when they first moved in, did they not take care to understand if their vision for themselves could actually be realized in a neighborhood with narrow streets that do not have adequate parking or room for delivery trucks to park and unload?
Why should I be expected to shut up or move if I don’t like what is happening on the street where I live, where I pay taxes, and where I can organize reasonable and legitimate opposition to their entitled, above-the-law aggression?
As you say, it’s my neighborhood, too. And I follow the law.