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Dante’s defies city imposed closing
by Mark McDermott
The battle for Dante’s Inferno rages on. "It’s time the people responsible, the owners, are held responsible," said Mayor Greg Hill, who signed an order requiring the restaurant close for business, effective 5 p.m. last Friday. "It’s time they act in good faith." The deadline came and went, and Dante’s is still open for business. "We won’t roll over," said Pat Lynch, who is one of the owners and the chief financial officer for Dante’s Inferno Inc. "We can’t roll over."
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Bartender Reno Caldwell and waitress Julie Irons stand outside Dante’s Inferno, which stayed open this week despite the city’s revocation of its conditional use permit. Photo by Mark McDermott |
"I signed the order last Friday," said Hill. "Technically, they are closed down. We tried to work with them to make it reasonable. I don’t know why they are still open. I mean, game over, right?"
City Attorney Jerry Goddard said that while the city could send in police to shut the establishment down, they have decided to move more cautiously and seek a court order. "Dante’s has been found to be a nuisance, but not the type where anyone’s life is at danger," said Goddard. "It’s not a chemical leak or a huge hole in the ground or something on that order. It is a business we have determined cannot operate under its current conditions. It is simply a noise problem."
The city council, in a split vote on Nov. 27, adopted a resolution revoking a conditional use permit for Dante’s, which is located at 1611 Catalina Ave. This was only the most recent action the city has taken, beginning a year ago last September when the planning commission took up the matter. On June 5 of this year, the city council believed it had reached a settlement when it modified the restaurant’s CUP, issuing 13 conditions Dante’s needed to fulfil in order to continue operation with the city’s blessing.
"That’s when the clock began ticking," said Lynch.
Among the conditions that were not met, the most crucial is the building of a wall outside the patio in front of the building. The original source of the conflict was the complaints nearby residents made about noise emanating from the patio, and the council’s solution was to order the construction of a soundproof wall to help reduce the noise.
The wall has not been built. Lynch and his associates said they have taken plans for a wall to city planning staff on three occasions, only to be rebuffed each time. He said that they asked for guidance and found none forthcoming, and singled out city planner Anita Kroeger, who he says remarked, "We don’t know what we want." Lynch likened getting city approval to chasing the Holy Grail.
"They say they want a wall built," he said. "But if you go to them with plans to build a wall, they just say no. What can you do? You are in a total Catch-22."
Kroeger said that it was true that plans had been dropped off at her desk. "The first one or maybe even two were really poorly drawn plans, probably done by a contractor. They didn’t meet the criteria of creating a sound barrier." She said an architect hired by Dante’s eventually contacted her, but his plan never came to fruition.
Kroeger also disagreed with Lynch’s assertion that Dante’s had sought planning department guidance. "They never made an effort to sit down and talk with us," she said. "Ultimately, though, we aren’t in the business of design. This is much more in the area of code enforcement. I don’t wake up in the morning excited about this kind of thing, but this is part of what we do."
Kroeger said that the need for the wall points to a larger problem. "The root of the issue is the fact that they were supposed to be a restaurant, but soon the restaurant went away and it became only a bar. Basically, I think that they weren’t being completely open in what they were trying to accomplish. Under the guise of a restaurant they were trying to be a sports bar."
Lynch, while contending that Dante’s is indeed a restaurant, said that the difficulty in resolving this matter has made it impossible to fully utilize the part of the building intended to be a restaurant. He also said that he and his partners have been attempting to sell the business, which contributed to the delay building a wall, but again the controversy surrounding the business has complicated any attempt to sell it.
Lynch’s biggest bone of contention, however, is the matter of being a public nuisance. He has created a chart of the calls of complaint the police received from 1995 through 2000 which identifies 70 percent of the calls coming from two residences across the street (both declined comment for this article). He also noted that since early this summer, there have been very few complaints from anyone. "We are being closed down because they call us a public nuisance," he said. "But go across the street, and listen. What do you hear? This is a busy street: you hear cars. You don’t hear anything from here. This is a quiet place."
Pat Lowler, a regular customer and a local resident, doesn’t particularly care if you call Dante’s a bar or a restaurant. "There’s been a bar here since 1952," he said. "When they moved in across the street, they knew there was a bar here. It’s always been here. What I want to know is why do four people tell the rest of us what to do? And why do the city council and police listen to those four and not the rest of us?"
Mayor Hill said he’d never been forced to sign an order closing a business down before. "I don’t think anyone wants to shut a business down," he said. "This is not an arbitrary or capricious action. We’ve given them every benefit of the doubt, and then some. There has just been one excuse after another. I’d like to see them stay open, but everyone has to play by the same rules."
"You know, to me and my partners, this isn’t a life or death issue," said Lynch, who is the general manager of the LA Memorial Coliseum Sports Arena. "Sure, we lose an investment, but this isn’t a big business. We all have other, bigger businesses." He pointed across the room, where a bartender and waitress were working. "But to the people who work here, it’s a different story."
Waitress Julie Irons said she is very worried about the establishment closing. She said she has worked this job three and-a-half years, and isn’t hopeful about her prospects should Dante’s go out of business. "If they close, I’m a single mother, and I would have to go on welfare," she said. "Unemployment wouldn’t be enough."
Bartender Reno Caldwell, who has been at Dante’s for most of eight years, said he isn’t sure about all the politics involved, but he knows what it will mean if the place closes. "If I lose this job, basically I’m out in the street." He paused. "I don’t know. Maybe I’m the victim here." ER