Updated Apr 2, 2010 - 2:02 pm
Bellevue halts second bikini barista stand's drive-thru operation
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MyNorthwest.com
The owner of a new espresso stand in Bellevue says the city is trying to shut her down.
Touchdown Espresso owner Adrianne Peterson got a visit from a representative from the City of Bellevue that told her she had to stop running her espresso stand as a drive-thru.
"Basically she told me, 'You can't have a drive thru espresso stand.' She told me that I had to put up signs that said, 'No drive-thru. Walk up only.' She said I had to put cones out to barricade the stand."
Touchdown Espresso sits in the parking lot of a 76 Station at the intersection of 148th and Main St. in Bellevue. Peterson says the stand has been at that location running as a drive-thru establishment for at least a decade.
"That stand has been there for ten years and has been in operation as a drive-thru for ten years."
Tim Waters with the City of Bellevue says the stand sits in a neighborhood area, and the city regulations say businesses cannot operate a drive-thru in an area identified as a neighborhood.
"In a neighborhood business zoning designation you can't have a drive-thru business of any sort. It doesn't conform to the land use code. We've just basically told them drive-thrus aren't permitted in the neighborhood and they would have to file a comprehensive plan amendment, land-use code amendment, with the city if they wanted to pursue it."
Waters says filing a comprehensive plan amendment is a very involved process.
"That is a process that can take many months if not longer because you have to file it, you have to go through public hearings, you have to go to the planning commission, you have to go to the city council. We only do comp plan amendments once a year. It's a huge deal. Comp plans are developed to be huge, huge deals that you can't toy with very easily."
Peterson thinks the city is targeting her stand because she is the first to operate the stand as a bikini barista-type operation.
"The previous stands [at this location] were just normal coffee stands and now mine is a "bikini stand." All of this time they never had a problem with it being a drive-thru until I got there."
This is the second time the city of Bellevue has asked a "bikini stand" to cease in its drive-thru operations. The city told Knotty Bodies espresso stand near Crossroads to shut down its drive-thru and the stand shuttered its walk-up window shortly after that.
Waters says some members of the Bellevue City Council brought up objections to the location of the Knotty Bodies espresso stand being adjacent to a city park. But he says the city has no official position against bikini stands and it will allow any business to operate as long as it falls in line with city regulations.
"As long as they're within the law, they can have any business that follows the legal requirements for the site."
Peterson is complying with the city's request and has posted a sign in her window that reads 'Walk up only.' Peterson fears the new walk up only status will have a major impact on her potential sales. She says even in the first few days displaying the sign she saw a loss in business. "With just that one sign I had a handful of customers drive away. They saw the sign, read it, and drove off."
While Waters admits it is rare for stands to be asked to modify their business in this way, he says the code violation was turned up after a complaint and that the city can't ignore complaints from city residents.
"We don't have people driving around looking for code violations like this. They're basically complaint driven. If we get a complaint to the city that something is occurring on a site that it shouldn't be then we go out and take a look. If it's accurate, we say, 'You have to stop. You have to comply with city law."
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