Several businesses and individuals are appealing a Columbus City Council decision allowing a permitted land use variance for local bar and restaurant Yo’ Bar to relocate to a building on Bluecutt Road.
Yo’ Bar owners Mignon and Ledrico Isaac, whose current location is a 99-capacity building on Highway 45 with limited parking, leased the former Columbus Boat Gallery building from Magnolia Enterprises earlier this year to move the restaurant to a bigger venue with more parking. The area is zoned C-1 commercial-residential, meaning any building occupants must obtain a permitted land use variance from the city Planning and Zoning Commission to build a bar, which the commission granted in a 5-2 vote over the objections of nearby business owners on Dec. 14. The next day, the city council upheld the commission’s decision in a 4-2 vote.
Last week, Oxford-based attorneys Pope Mallette and Paul Watkins Jr. filed a notice of appeal in Lowndes County Circuit Court on behalf of nine plaintiffs objecting to the variance, even as the Isaacs have continued with renovations to turn the Bluecutt building into a bar with a seating capacity of 160.
“It’s very, very frustrating,” Mignon Isaac said. “As we said at the planning commission meeting and the city council meeting, all we’re trying to do is, one, grow our business and, two, bring revenue into the city. … It’s like a win-win for everybody.”
The notice of appeal claims the commission’s and council’s decisions were “arbitrary and capricious” and that there was “no proof that any of the conditions set forth in the Zoning Ordinance had been met.”
Per the city’s zoning ordinance, a bar/restaurant/lounge locating in a C-1 area must be “harmonious” with buildings and businesses already in the area. Bluecutt is currently home to medical practices, real estate agencies and other small businesses, and was formerly home to a bar that closed in 2009.
During the commission and council meetings, representatives from some nearby businesses — including Realtor Doris Hardy, of CENTURY 21 Doris Hardy and Associates, and Columbus attorney Rod Ray, who represented Leigh Enterprises and the Leigh Foundation, which has several business offices on Bluecutt — said they were concerned about the bar increasing traffic, trash and police calls to Bluecutt.
Mignon Isaac said she doesn’t feel those criticisms are fair. The Isaacs plan to designate staff members to clean up any trash in the parking lot. As for traffic, Mignon said, while the restaurant will open at 11 a.m., the vast majority of their patrons visit the restaurant at nights, and especially weekends, when the surrounding businesses have all closed, so there should be no little overlap between traffic to Yo’ Bar and traffic to the other businesses.
Ray told The Dispatch he reached out to Mallette and Watkins to help area businesses appeal the council’s decision, but declined to comment further on the matter. Hardy said while she didn’t feel comfortable speaking about the legal process of the appeal, she has the same concerns about Yo’ Bar’s relocation to Bluecutt that she raised at the council meeting.
She argued that the fact that Yo’ Bar has security guards, a 160-capacity and designated staff members to pick up trash and direct traffic on certain busy nights makes it inherently incompatible with the other businesses on Bluecutt.
“I told (Mignon) Isaac that I genuinely, sincerely respect your entrepreneurship and the success that you’ve achieved, and I applaud and have best wishes for your continued growth and success, but not on Bluecutt,” Hardy said. “It has nothing to do with the establishment, it has nothing to do with the people, it simply has to do with the guidelines of C-1 neighborhood zoning.”
Mallette and Watkins did not return messages from The Dispatch by press time.
Conflict disclosure: The Dispatch has hired Ledrico Isaac for freelance photography work in the past.
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