By Teri Carnicelli

    The question over whether there is adequate existing parking at the shopping center located at the southwest corner of 16th Street and Bethany Home Road may soon be answered.

    Shopping center owner Bethany Core LLC has been directed by Phoenix Zoning Administrator William Allison to create a parking plan that clearly accommodates both the proposed Z’Tejas restaurant, to be located 150 feet west of the old gas station site at the north end of the property, and the other tenants in the center. The most current plans for the restaurant call for approximately 8,360 square feet, with 1,175 square feet of that total serving as the outside patio or “porch” area.

    As part of that parking plan, Bethany Core LLC has been asked to submit a site plan, sealed by an architect or engineer, showing accurate measurements of all buildings and tenant space in the center, including the proposed Z’Tejas.

Essentially, the parking plan will be a table showing each commercial use at the center, and the associated number of parking spaces required by city ordinance for that use.

    Adam Baugh with Withey Morris PLC, who is representing the shopping center owners, said that they already have a similar report that was submitted to the city on Dec. 1. But, he adds, the request for an up-to-date parking table is “very reasonable.”

    “We are working with the city on one right now,” he explains. And, given what he calls the “misinformation” that he believes has been generated among both the center’s retail tenants as well as nearby residents, “it’s going to be to their benefit as much as ours to have the final numbers out there.”

    Bethany Core LLC is seeking a variance to reduce the overall number of parking spaces for the shopping center that are required by city ordinance, as well as a variance to allow compact parking spaces to be used as 38 percent of the required parking on site. Those variances will be examined, once again, by a city zoning administrator at a hearing set for 9 a.m. Thursday, March 1 at Phoenix City Hall, 200 W. Washington St.

    “I’m not certain that we need the variances,” Baugh says. “It’s possible we may be able to make the site comply without them. In the worst case scenario, if we do need a variance, we already have a hearing scheduled.”

    Baugh adds that, depending on the results of the new site plan and parking chart, the hearing will either proceed on March 1 or Bethany Core LLC may simply withdraw its variance requests.

    While the parking variance issue has yet to be decided, the property owners did receive approval on Jan. 12 for their two use permit requests for both an outdoor “porch” and for alcohol sales both inside the proposed Z’Tejas restaurant as well as on the expected patio.

    Those who spoke in opposition of the use permits at the Jan. 12 hearing worry about the additional noise the patio will create, as well as general concerns about increased traffic in the intersection and the potential for overflow parking into nearby neighborhood streets as the center becomes more crowded with businesses and consumers.

    As one of the stipulations attached to the use permit approval, Allison also directed Bethany Core LLC to organize a meeting specifically with residents along the cul-de-sac 15th Street, which lies directly on the other side of the center’s westernmost wall. The meeting will be to provide information to the residents of the eight or so homes on that street about the city’s permit parking program. However, Bethany Core LLC is under no obligation to either pay for the permit parking or reimburse residents for their out-of-pocket expenses, should they choose to apply for the program for their street.

    But Bethany Core LLC also has been directed to raise the height of that westernmost wall to 6 feet at a minimum and to repair it and stucco it to make it more attractive and more soundproof. One resident of 15th Street present at the hearing hoped the wall would be much higher than 6 feet, since it is anticipated that valet parkers for Z’Tejas will use the commercial alley behind Zipps Sports Grill, just on the other side of the wall, to return cars to their customers, creating a lot of traffic noise along that south-north route.

    Baugh admits that while some of the stipulations seem to have little to do with a use permit request for alcohol sales, nonetheless the shopping center owners are happy to comply in order to see the Z’Tejas restaurant development move forward.

    But others are still strongly opposed to the planned new construction. Todd Goldman, an owner of Zipps Sports Grill, says he has no problem with Z’Tejas as a business but is against putting a brand-new building in an existing parking lot. “This shopping center is losing its feel as a ‘neighborhood center,’” he says. “It’s reaching critical mass already.”

    David Tierney of Sacks Tierney P.A., legal consultant for Zipps, adds that “20 percent of this center is still vacant and not yet leased, and yet the center is already seriously underparked by things they (Bethany Core LLC) have done themselves. You are killing the other tenants if you add Z’Tejas.”