Christopher Peak Photo
Shell & Bones and City Point Kitchen share opposite ends of the Pequonnock Yacht Club.
Shell & Bones, the upscale waterfront eatery, is trying to stop a next-door competitor from adding dinner service, claiming there’s not enough parking spots to go around.
A lawyer for Shell & Bones made that case Tuesday night before the Board of Zoning Appeals, as he asked the commissioners to reject an application to extend City Point Kitchen’s closing time by six hours, to 10 p.m. The attorney, Ken Rozich, said that the neighborhood just can’t handle any more traffic at that time.
That argument drew counterarguments from neighbors who showed up to support City Point Kitchen owner Francis Lobo’s petition. They told the commissioners that 125-seat Shell & Bones’s evening crowd makes parking tough, not the 28-seat eatery where lower prices cater to neighbors who can walk over. A traffic study appeared to support their contention, finding that extended hours would add only five or six vehicle trips per hour.
Shell & Bones’s lawyer, Ken Rozich, squares off with City Point Kitchen’s owner, Frank Lobo, before the zoning board.
But due to a technicality, the zoning board chose not to weigh in on the parking issue. The application was missing a signature from the property-owner, Pequonnock Yacht Club. Lobo said he thought he needed the zoning board’s go-ahead before he could ask his landlord to change his lease at 98 South Water St.
“That’s not the way it works,” Benjamin Trachten, the zoning board’s chair, said.
Lobo agreed to return to the board next month after he obtains a letter from the club. He asked if he could still make his points at Tuesday night’s hearing, given that community members had sat through a two-hour meeting to testify. The board allowed it.
“We are a casual, inexpensive, and very small restaurant in City Point that offers a neighborhood option for dining, as opposed to a spectacular and very expensive restaurant in our neighborhood,” said Lobo, an immunologist at Yale School of Medicine who is better known to his neighbors as “Frank” since he opened his restaurant in 2015. “This is a small thing; this is a neighborhood-oriented thing.”
Lobo sought to preempt any concerns about parking. “The parking issue is something that is a vital concern to me, more than anybody here, because I live there and I deal with the abusive nature of the large restaurant in the area that doesn’t seem to care about the parking issue,” he said. He added that he plans to set up valet parking to deal with any extra traffic.
“Little Narrative”
City Point Kitchen is trying to extend its operating hours.
Shell & Bones.
The lawyer for Shell & Bones, which the team behind Geronimo’s opened up right around the same time as Lobo’s kitchen, stood up to pick apart the application. He pointed out to the zoning commissioners that Lobo’s application wasn’t authorized by the owner, asked where the valet mentioned in his “little narrative” would put the cars, and argued that the city had tried to avoid conflicting hours with its original approval.
“You need to look at why the applicant’s hours were limited. You have essentially two restaurants located in this area. My client’s restaurant operates from 4 – 10 [p.m.]; this restaurant operates from 8 [a.m.] til 4 p.m. They are uses that are consistent with the property, but they don’t conflict,” Rozich said. “This applicant is now looking to conflict, to bring people to an area where we already have a 125-seat restaurant operating. There’s been no suggestion of how this is going to impact the area.”
Lobo responded that he isn’t seeking a special exception for parking. The application concerns only extended hours, he said. He reiterated, “Nobody has more motivation to solve [parking problems] than me.”
Dan Moore: Shell & Bones is the neighborhood’s parking problem.
His customers came to his defense. Ruth Swanton suggested that the restaurants could park in Sound School’s lot after hours. Dan Moore confirmed that many residents walk to the Kitchen to eat.
“For Shell & Bones to complain about parking and the half-dozen cars that Frank’s business could possibly create, they’re the parking problem in the neighborhood!” said Moore, a frequent patron of Lobo’s diner. “To be honest with you, nobody granted Shell & Bones the right to use the rest of South Water Street. They do. So why can’t Frank’s cars use the street?
“It’s open, public parking. I don’t believe it’s an exclusive right. Maybe somebody from Shell & Bones has to drive a little further to park when they come there; I’m sorry.”
Tom Talbot, the deputy director of zoning, recommended approving the application, if Lobo can get authorization from the yacht club. The traffic wouldn’t be “meaningfully impacted” and another dining option could “strengthen the identity of this area as both a vital neighborhood with a … commercial component and an area of significant shoreline recreational activity,” Talbot wrote in an advisory report.