Eatery steamed after city closes patio

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This article was published 26/08/2020 (1889 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Running a restaurant during a pandemic is hard, but it’s even tougher when you must also fight city hall.

Just ask Kyriakos Vogiatzakis, owner of Cork & Flame Restaurant and Bar.

First, his St. James-area restaurant had to close dine-in service under COVID-19 restrictions.  When restaurants were allowed to open outdoor dining areas, Vogiatzakis invested in doubling his patio space and included a pergola to shade his customers from the summer sun.

The pergola was a problem. City regulations don’t allow pergolas as part of temporary patios and city bylaw officers shut his patio on July 10,  hurting Vogiatzakis’s chances of recouping funds lost during the closure forced by the pandemic.

“There was no notice in advance saying ‘We found deficiencies,’ or you have so-and-so amount of time to rectify this problem. They just came in and shut us down,” Vogiatzakis said. “It was very disappointing to have the City of Winnipeg do this to us when they should be working with us, not against us, to revive small business again in this city.”

Vogiatzakis and his partners in the Kirkfield-area restaurant decided to expand the existing patio in May under the City of Winnipeg’s temporary patio program.

The restaurant got the green light from the city to temporarily double its outdoor dining area in late May, and as part of the expansion Vogiatzakis include the pergola, which is an open-air archway with posts.  At the time, Vogiatzakis said, he wanted to get building permits for the pergola, but claims a city official said applications were not being accepted, and to just go ahead with the addition.

Under the temporary patio program, new patios must not include overhead structures, according to the City of Winnipeg. A spokesman for the city said Cork & Flame’s temporary patio registration was cancelled because it didn’t meet safety requirements agreed to by the owner in a signed declaration.

“It was very disappointing to have the City of Winnipeg do this to us when they should be working with us, not against us, to revive small business again in this city.”–Kyriakos Vogiatzakis

After three weeks of welcoming customers beneath the pergola and then getting hit with a fine for the unsanctioned structure, Vogiatzakis said he hired an engineer to ensure the structure met building codes, and shared the report with the city.

He says the city countered, refusing to reissue the temporary patio registration and insisted the restaurateur apply for a permanent occupancy permit.

Charleswood-Tuxedo-Westwood city councillor Kevin Klein said the dispute is an example of how the city of Winnipeg fails and frustrates small business owners and called on the relevant department managers to collaborate with Vogiatzakis.

“You can’t survive in today’s environment. We’re already losing some restaurants. At what point does the city start to be reasonable?” Klein said. “Why is it taking this long? Why isn’t somebody working with him, and saying ‘Listen, we know your business is in trouble right now… let us at least help you with this.’”

In a statement, a spokesman said the city has made “many attempts to help the business owner submit the required permit applications for a building, development, and occupancy permit, all of which have been dismissed or ignored.”

The city has carried on issuing building permits for patios throughout June and July, he said, and acknowledged an engineer, on behalf of Cork & Flame, provided an opinion on the pergola but didn’t complete required post-construction permit applications.

“As it stands today, there are outstanding permit application requirements that the business owner is choosing not to fulfill before required permits can be provided,” the spokesman said.

Vogiatzakis said he submitted the applications three weeks ago but hasn’t heard from the city as daylight hours diminish.

“Summer is short, and we’re in a unique time, we’re living in history right now, and we all need to work together as a community to achieve the same goals, which is moving forward and being safe,” Vogiatzakis said.

“We haven’t really made any noise until now. We were hoping the city would want to work with us, but they haven’t shown that good faith.”

“You can’t survive in today’s environment. We’re already losing some restaurants. At what point does the city start to be reasonable?”–Coun. Kevin Klein

danielle.dasilva@freepress.mb.ca

gabrielle.piche@freepress.mb.ca