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by Charles Carreon
August 11, 2005
The parking lot was full at City Hall on
Tuesday night. For weeks Ashland had been bubbling with the news that the
City Attorney had ruled that the Rogue Valley Roasting Company, an East
Main Ashland landmark with a broad clientele, was operating without
required City permits. Coming hot on the heels of the Chief Bianca
dust-up, the flap over The Roasting Company seemed ill-timed,
publicity-wise. The fact that the anti-coffee-house action had been
instigated at the direct request of City Councilwoman Cate Hartzell, whose
home lies across from the popular shop, seemed to have especially raised
hackles. Adding to this the fact that The Roasting Company had strong
local support, the heavy turnout was not unexpected.
In what struck many of the waiting citizens
as a ploy to delay their involvement, two other matters consumed the first
two hours of the Commission meeting. It was around nine o’clock and still
standing room only in the Ashland City Council Chamber when the Planning
Commission took up Planning Action 2005-01313, “An Appeal to the Planning
Commission of a Staff Advisor determination that the current use of the
subject property at 917 E. Main Street as a coffee shop is an illegal,
non-conforming use in violation of Ashland Municipal Code 18.68.090.”
Appellant Jerry Quast, the proprietor of The Roasting Company, was
represented by Alan Harper, seeking to overturn the verdict of illegality
that Asst. City Attorney Mike Reeder had imposed on the Ashland landmark.
Jerry and Deborah Quast’s business life
hung in the balance. The bad news had arrived in a letter dated April 5,
2005, signed by John McLaughlin, Ashland’s Director of Community
Development. McLaughlin’s letter told Jerry and Deborah that “the City of
Ashland … has determined that … your occupancy of the site as a coffee
shop is considered illegal [therefore you] are required to apply for a
Conditional Use Permit [and] failure to apply for a permit will result in
the City being required to take enforcement action.”
What had brought this meteorite crashing
down upon their heads, the Quasts asked themselves? The answers would come
in good time. On March 17, 2005, Cate Hartzell had sent a letter to City
Manager Gino Grimaldi that accused The Roasting Company of a serious
offense: “The Rogue Valley Roasting Company has become successful;
unfortunately, the neighbors pay the cost and the City stepped away from
its role.” Success often leads to a fall, but for The Roasting Company, it
seemed too ironic. The booming trade at the coffeehouse, that seems to
funnel hundreds of people of every age and description through on a good
day, is a symbol of the city’s vitality. Equally important, and perhaps
equally offensive to its detractors, over the years The Roasting Company
became a public forum where people could meet away from the homogenized
coffee ambiance that saturates the town. The Roasting Company, its scores
of supporters made clear, provides a welcome antidote to the corporate
blandness that has invaded Ashland insidiously over the last thirty years.
For Councilwoman Hartzell to attack The Roasting Company seemed
surprisingly insensitive, a bureaucratic faux pas that attracted notice
from supporters and opponents alike.
Passing beyond the touchy-feely realm, the
sudden appearance of a real threat to the existence of The Roasting
Company touched a nerve of self-protectiveness in the Ashland core.
Heavens, thought many, where will I get coffee and a bagel? Plus, many old
timers have bought food and drinks at that location for four decades, and
the very idea that the place could be shut down for a zoning violation
seemed ludicrous. For their part, the Quasts have always been squeaky
clean. After they bought the property in 1994, City planning employee Bill
Molnar told them they didn’t need a Conditional Use Permit to operate a
coffee shop because of its historic uses. In other words, the property was
“grandfathered” as a grocery store deli/coffeeshop. When the Quasts made
indoor improvements and added a deck to the coffeehouse in July, 1998,
City planning employees Mark Knox signed off on building and zoning
permits with full knowledge of current use as a coffeehouse. Internal City
memoranda acknowledged that the Quast’s property had been grandfathered
for the coffeehouse use. What could be more secure?
But trouble sneaks up when you rarely
expect it, and it turned out that having a City Councilperson across the
street from the business was not a good thing. And having obliging lawyers
in the City Attorney’s office who work at the behest of the City Council
ready to field complaints for City insiders may be the type of problem
that just plain folks have a nose for. Assistant City Attorney Mike Reeder
told the Commissioners that after investigating Councilwoman Hartzell’s
complaints, he had found no grounds for taking action against The Roasting
Company’s operation, but that after a searching review of the file, he had
discovered that City planners had made errors that had to be corrected by
having The Roasting Company’s owners file for a Conditional Use Permit.
Reeder explained that “the rule of law” demanded that The Roasting
Company’s operation be brought into compliance, or face enforcement
proceedings. Without apologies, he urged the Commission to uphold his
finding that a “change in use” which occurred during a rather vague time
period in the nineties, rendered the presence of the coffeehouse illegal.
Reeder counseled the Commissioners to disregard any arguments about the
untimeliness of the City’s negative land use action, because the landowner
“has the burden” of remaining in compliance with local laws, regardless of
whatever reassurances they might receive from City officers. Thus, without
saying it, Reeder seemed to be articulating a new rule – the citizen must
pay when the City discovers its own “errors” years after the fact. Alan
Harper argued that the delay was all-important and barred any action by
the City against the existing grandfathered use, because the 1998 permit
signoff by Mark Knox was a “final land use action” to which objections had
to be filed within a very short time frame, and they were now nearly seven
years too late. Reeder’s five-page, single-spaced decision convicted The
Roasting Company of illegal operation only after awkwardly attempting to
explain away the problem of untimeliness, but the verbose legal essay came
off as a sophomoric piece of pettifoggery, if the three retired attorneys
who testified at the hearing were any sort of jury. Certainly the crowd
were having none of Reeder’s lawyerly fancy steps, as he learned when he
harvested catcalls from the crowd after inadvertently disclosing his view
that the opinions of citizens were “not relevant.” But still, on any
ordinary night, the paper-pushers would have won. But this was a different
night. The crowd did not disperse, and one sensed they would not leave
quietly without being given their due.
Chair John Fields managed the proceedings
sensitively, and the Commissioners, after initially seeming somewhat
alarmed at the extraordinarily large turnout, gamely extended the time for
the hearing until 11 o’clock. The citizen speakers were notably concise,
clocking in, on average, at no more than 40 seconds beyond the 3-minute
limit. Several speakers commented on the tardiness of the City’s action,
and the fact that the City’s ruling of illegality was based on the City’s
admission that it had erred twice in permitting the coffeehouse to operate
without requiring a Conditional Use Permit. It did appear, as John Gaffey
observed, that the City Attorney’s office had made a mess and dumped it in
the Planning Commission’s lap. Several speakers echoed this opinion,
noting that the City should not penalize a landowner for “errors” that had
been “found” by Asst. City Attorney Reeder after looking for some grounds
to satisfy Councilwoman Hartzell’s demand for “City involvement” in her
neighborhood relations. Several citizens complained that the proceedings
were “a travesty,” speculating that real estate interests might be
attempting to oust a successful business in order to convert the location
to multi-unit housing, and one The Roasting Company supporter bluntly
stated that “Something stinks. Something stinks and everyone here in this
room can smell it.” No one disagreed with him, and I for one did not smell
coffee.
After the testimony of the citizens, Cate
Hartzell, who entered and left the Chamber as if on cue, gave her
testimony in the sincere voice we have come to recognize as her hallmark.
However, she spoke so softly that it almost seemed as if she wished to
speak privately with the Commissioners, and displayed only one photograph
to the Commission that she said was representative of many more that she
had back at her home. One wag in the audience wondered whether this was an
invitation for all of the citizens, or just the Commissioners, to stop by
and flip through her album of The Roasting Company surveillance photos.
After the testimony of the complaining
Councilor, the issue was brought to a vote on the motion of Commissioner
Ken Kairn, after the motion of Commissioner John Stromberg to allow time
for discussion failed for lack of a second. The vote was 7-to-2 in favor
of overturning the City’s finding of illegality. One opposing vote was
cast by Olena Black, who sought to stretch the Commission’s jurisdiction
to encompass considerations of whether The Roasting Company’s provision of
free wireless Internet had “changed the use” of the coffeeshop. The second
dissenting vote was from John Stromberg, whose motion for further
discussion and delay received no second.
The Quasts had been cut down from the
gallows, and none too soon. Afterward, Jerry Quast clearly seemed
emotionally drained, and when I asked him for a comment, he almost seemed
not to be believing how things had gone as he simply repeated, “We never
thought we had done anything wrong.” Indeed, he had not, and as one former
City employee said in his testimony, the event was an embarrassment to the
City, for which the Quasts should receive an apology and compensation for
their legal fees. With land use lawyers running about $300/hour, the
Quasts are going to have to sell a lot of coffee to get back to where they
were before their powerful neighbor, with the help of a lot of free legal
work from the City Attorney’s office, declared war on their business. But
that’s politics, and when you are fighting City Hall, sometimes just
surviving to fight another day is a big win.
For the community, the win could not be
clearer. The Planning Commission has been informed that they are not be
used as an ad hoc grievance council for liveability issues, and that
“success” is not a reason to close a local business, regardless of who
lives across the street from it.
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