After two weeks of adhering to a zoning code diet, the Fat Tuscan Café is not as plump as it once was.
Between December and May, the café had been functioning in quiet defiance of its zoning code, which prohibited the café from operating on Sundays and past 4 p.m. on weekdays. The café had also been hosting live, amplified music in its courtyard, which further violated the code.
After a noise complaint in May, owners of the Fat Tuscan were issued a citation that forced staff to comply with the preexisting zoning code.
The new code enforcement has resulted in a 50 percent drop in income, said Michelle Reeves, partial owner of the café.
Since then, Reeves said, she has canceled the café’s dinner menu, laid off two staff members and cut other workers’ hours to one shift a week.
“We have no plan B,” she said.
Karen Orr, who has lived for 30 years at 715 NE Second St., one block from the café, said she does not think the restaurant should be in her neighborhood at all.
Even if the café abides by the noise ordinance, she said, she would still hear the live music, because she lives within 200 feet of the building.
Most of her neighbors who live on the side of the street closest to the café are renting their homes and have not had to live with the noise, she said.
An agreement is implied between residents and the city that the houses that share the block with the Fat Tuscan should act as a buffer for the noise coming from Main Street, she said.
“That contract between the city and its citizens, when they approved [the café], was broken,” she said. “There’s no way that this can go on with these teeny tiny lots and not be intrusive.”
