The quest for a restaurant to move-in to the restored historic Civic Arts Building hit a snag at Monday evening’s Planning Commission meeting…

Restaurant proposal nixed in Hercules
By Tom Lochner

Siding with a determined group of opponents, the Hercules Planning Commission nixed a planned restaurant at the historic Civic Arts building, agreeing it would clash with the serenity of the surrounding neighborhood.

Sala Thai Restaurant & Lounge, namesake of a restaurant in Richmond, had signed a tentative lease with the Hercules Redevelopment Agency and needed a use permit. But the commissioners, with Richard Mitchell and Sherry McCoy taking the lead, agreed with residents of the immediately adjacent Hercules Historic Homes — about 20 restored Queen Anne and Colonial Revival cottages on a loop off Santa Fe Avenue — that the noise, cooking smells, light, traffic and other effects of a restaurant with late-night hours and weekend early morning hours could not be mitigated sufficiently.

Commission Chairwoman Myrna de Vera was sympathetic to arguments that the redevelopment agency’s quest for potential commercial tenants had yielded only a single one, Sala Thai, and that the Civic Arts building’s “Public/Quasi-Public-Park” zoning would allow a restaurant, albeit one that could not serve alcohol. But de Vera ultimately joined her colleagues in a 5-0 vote to deny a use permit.

Historic Homes resident Jaylene Watson, a leader of the opponents’ group, hailed the vote and praised the commissioners, especially Mitchell and McCoy, for their questioning of the staff report that recommended approval.

“Commissioner Mitchell hit most of the concerns of the neighborhood, and seemed genuinely concerned about how a restaurant came to be for the Civic Arts building,” Watson said Tuesday, a day after a public hearing before the commission.

In the months preceding Monday’s vote, residents complained about the process that brought the plan to the brink of approval, noting that a restaurant never came up during a Planning Commission-sponsored workshop on the Civic Arts building’s future use two years earlier.

Redevelopment officials, sensitive to complaints by many residents that the vision of a pedestrian-friendly waterfront area with restaurants, shops and galleries has been slow in coming since it was hatched in 2000, believed a restaurant at the Civic Arts building, at the southern end of Railroad Avenue, could spark commercial development further up the avenue — a notion echoed Monday by a resident of the nearby Promenade neighborhood.

Don Goewey, another Historic Homes resident, said he found out only incidentally, during a conversation with a city official about a hedge he was trying to save, that a restaurant planned to come to the Civic Arts building; other residents found fliers earlier this year announcing a summer 2008 opening of Sala Thai.

Opponents said they are against the location of the proposed restaurant, not the restaurant itself. Several praised restaurateur Kay Sala and her architect, Trung Nguyen, and said they would be happy to see them establish a restaurant in the area, just not at the Civic Arts building. Suggestions included farther up Railroad Avenue or in the proposed Hercules Bayfront development on the waterfront.

Sala has 10 days to file a notice that she intends to appeal the Planning Commission decision to the City Council. Contacted at her Richmond restaurant, Sala referred questions to real estate broker Michael Penner, who helped negotiate the tentative lease. Penner could not be reached Tuesday.

Nguyen said after Monday’s hearing that the Civic Arts building would have been “ideal” for Sala’s restaurant, but another location nearby might be a possibility.

“I think my client would entertain the thought of a different location,” Nguyen said. “We’re still optimistic.”

Viktor Manrique, a commercial broker with Coldwell Banker’s Hercules office, said restaurants have a hard time finding space farther up Railroad Avenue because the storefront spaces are too small. He said spaces at Bayfront likely will be larger and more flexible.