For the owner of a popular Old Fourth Ward restaurant who wants to open a new spot in Brookhaven, it has been a "painstaking" few years.
Scott Serpas, of Serpas True Food, lives a few blocks away from the "Little White House" at 2536 Caldwell Road, where he plans to open a restaurant called Dixie Moon.
But he's been unable to do that, as he and land owner Fritz Rybert have been embattled in a back-and-forth process with Brookhaven involving a law suit, "variance hearings, administrative appeal hearings, a rezoning, and now another administrative appeal challenging the city's most recent revocation of development permits" as explained in a letter to the editor submitted to The Brookhaven Post.
The delays are costing them tens of thousands of dollars, the city is losing money and legal fees are being paid by the taxpayers and residents of Brookhaven, the letter said.
“I’m numb,” Serpas told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “It pulls the heart and soul out of you.”
The reason the proposed restaurant has been in legal limbo for more than three years is, in its simplest of terms, this: Serpas wanted the restaurant to open in an old one-story building, but rules in the Peachtree-Brookhaven Overlay require new or altered buildings in the district to be at least two stories, reaching a minimum of 28 feet.
Brookhaven city manager Christian Sigman said in an interview that he doesn't know why the two-story-minimum decision was made — it happened before his time — but it is the city's guiding priniciple. He added that officials are in the process of reveiwing the Overlay, "because there is a lot of confusion," but city council must follow it until it's changed.
"Hundreds of projects are done in this city ranging from little bitty ones to big ones, and occasionally there are sticky ones," Sigman said. "This is a sticky one."
At the city's very first Zoning Board of Appeals meeting in 2013, Serpas height variance request was denied, despite community support in favor of the restaurant. The Brookhaven-Peachtree Community Alliance wrote a letter opposing the request, saying the existing structure did not comply with the Overlay.
Eventually, though, a rezoning application was approved in 2015. Things started to look up for Dixie Moon.
But last month, the city issued a stop work order after it said the structure was demolished without proper permits and city approval.
The original foundation is still there, but Rybert said the walls and floor joists were taken down after a city inspector agreed they needed to replace the bad lumber, which they’d discovered was rotten and termite-infested. They intended to rebuild the structure as permitted — but with good wood.
“It clearly says in the Code, if it's unsafe, you need to repair and move forward,” Rybert said.
An email exchange between city building official Paul Ivey and community development director Ben Song indicated that only a single beam had termite damage, according to Reporter Newspapers.
The developers have appealed the city’s decision to stop construction, which is set to appear at the next ZBA meeting on Oct. 19. Sigman hopes a resolution will be reached at the meeting; he said he wishes there was "something he could do" for the developers, and that there's "no beef" between them.
Rybert, who years ago allowed city officials to use the building as an office, said he’s “never seen anything like this” in 30 years of business.
“I thought Brookhaven as a city would be a lot easier,” he said. “It’s totally opposite.”
Despite everything, Serpas is determined to open his new concept — a restaurant with a Southern coastal feel — at this location. He’s engrained into the fabric of the community, he said, and wants to express his creativity in Brookhaven.
“I’m not one of these chefs who has multiple properties, flies in and checks on people,” he said. “I'm on top of it.”
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