Erin Nestor and her partner, Rebecca Denk, thought they’d found the
perfect spot to open a small restaurant and lounge in the Central
District—a storefront in a brand-new brick building on the corner
of 25th Avenue and Union Street. The couple, who also own the
BottleNeck Lounge a few blocks north on Madison Street, planned to open
a new place called Tryst. It would serve cocktails and a full dinner
menu crafted in part by Skillet, a popular mobile dining spot. But on
July 14, Denk and Nestor learned that the project had hit a bottleneck
of its own.
Although Nestor says the couple has “been fully transparent about
our desire to serve cocktails,” and although the state liquor control
board was in the process of approving a liquor license for the spot,
officials at the city’s Department of Planning and Development (DPD)
halted the project. It deemed the 800-square-foot establishment a bar,
not a restaurant—a major change that would have required Nestor
and Denk to spend $3,000 and wait six months for city approval, a
lifetime in the restaurant business.
So Nestor and Denk backed out of the project. The
storefront—on a major arterial, two blocks from a liquor store
and another bar—will become an office for an information
technology company.
Neighbors, who’ve long been troubled by drug dealing and violence
outside other nearby bars, seemed to overwhelmingly support the
addition of Tryst to the neighborhood. DPD’s decision to oppose a
neighborhood-friendly restaurant in the Central District conflicts with
the department’s recent support for mixed-use density and street life
in other neighborhoods.
“This decision is stunningly bad,” says Jean Tinnea, a board member
of the Central Area Development Association, a group that’s trying to
revitalize the blighted neighborhood. “It goes against everything the
neighborhood residents and businesses are working toward.” 