P&Z okays restaurant design (barely)

Planning and Zoning Commissioners give the nod to a restaurant that looks like this
at Kyle Parkway and I-35

Some commissioners wanted it to look more like this

Apparently Kyle likes its shopping centers looking like well ordered college campuses — a place where every building has basically the same design element even if it doesn’t look specifically like a clone of the building adjacent to it. If something like a Joe’s Crab Shack wanted to locate a facility here, the Kyle movers and shakers would probably insist it be stuck somewhere all by its lonesome, preferably hidden in a grove of trees. Individuality is frowned upon.

Which is why the Caribbean- themed chicken joint Pollo Tropical got some pushback this evening from the Planning & Zoning Commission. Its corporate owners want to erect two fast food restaurants — a Pollo Tropical right at the northeast corner of Kyle Parkway and I-35 and a Taco Cabana to its north. Kyle’s standards apparently require some form of masonry, preferably brick, to extend at least as high as the doorways on buildings at that location. And that’s not Pollo Tropical’s style — or "brand," as the restaurant’s officials called it. They were willing to accommodate Kyle’s wishes up to a point, but a comparatively low point, say a foot or so above the ground. Commissioner Mike Wilson wanted more of an accommodation and when chair Michael Rubsam moved to approve the amendment as stated, Wilson attempted to amend it to increase the amount of masonry on the building. Rubsam was not willing to accept the amendment, so the original question was put to a vote and it passed 3-2 with commissioners Dex Ellison and Lori Huey siding with Rubsam and Timothy Kay joining Wilson in voting against. (Irene Melendez and Michelle Christie did not attend tonight’s meeting).

I’ve collaborated with enough advertising firms and public relations agencies to know they take this "brand" stuff seriously — like the difference between life and death. If Wilson had succeeded with his amendment, I’m betting the Fiesta Restaurant Group, the outfit that owns both Pollo Tropical and Taco Cabana, would have just walked away from Kyle and found some other city to locate their restaurants. These companies take a lot of time, conduct a lot of research, host a lot of focus groups and, most important of all, spend a whole lot of money to come up with their distinctive look or "brand" for these restaurants and they are not about to let a bunch of local yokels make any significant alterations to that brand.

So now the issue moves to the City Council where the question will not be what do council members want the restaurants to look like — do they want them to conform to other buildings in that quadrant. The question will be a simpler than that. It will be whether they want a Pollo Tropical and a Taco Cabana on that corner or not.

P&Z commissioners also approved lifting the maximum parking requirement for both restaurants. Commissioner Kay was the sole vote against Pollo Tropical’s parking request. He argued the city must have had some reason for setting these requirements.

Actually, the opposite is true. These days, most forward looking city planners are arguing to do away with minimum parking requirements. In fact, there’s a grass roots movement called #blackfridayparking. Folks from all over North America are planning on taking pictures of parking lots in their communities and uploading them to Twitter or Instagram with the hashtag #blackfridayparking. Part of this group’s plan is to highlight those cities that have eliminated or at least lowered minimum parking requirements.

One of these cities is Fayetteville, Ark., and you can read all about its reasons for doing that here.

Kay joined the other four in not objecting to Taco Cabana’s similar parking request. He told me after the meeting he voted for the second parking request after voting against the first one simply because he was tired of beating his head against a brick stucco wall.

(Note: This article took considerably longer to write and edit than it should, but that’s because it was all done during commercial breaks in the World Series.)