Robert Baltierrez sees a very narrow window for his restaurant to remain viable. Inside that very narrow window is a drive-thru, a drive-thru he said the city has told him he needs to shut down.
“That’s the only way I can survive,” he said Friday afternoon. Baltierrez owns Taco Boy, 804 S. Mission St.
He said he was visited by a city official from the building and planning office on Thursday, who told him that he needs to shut it down and that the city only tolerated it as an emergency measure to get through the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I don’t know where they’re getting their information from,” Baltierrez said about the notion that the pandemic is over. Indeed, a more easily transmissible version of the SARS-CoV-2 virus was confirmed in Isabella County last week.
The drive-thru is critical to his hopes to survive, he said. He used it last year to keep people employed and without it, he’d fold for certain.
That would take a piece of local history with it.
“I’ve been here for 50 years,” he said. “I was the seventh restaurant in town.”
An email was sent to Darcy Orlik, the city’s spokeswoman, shortly after 11 a.m. inquiring whether the order to shut down the drive-thru was real, who made the decision to give it and if they really believe the COVID-19 pandemic is over. She has yet to respond.
After originally being told to close the drive-thru, he said city officials softened to asking him to meet with Jacob Kain, city planner, to discuss it. He called and left a message, but said that Kain hasn’t returned his call. In the meantime, he and his crew posted a petition to Change.org to rally support.
Baltierrez said he’d previously talked to city planning officials about putting in a drive-thru. In fact, he did everything to the restaurant they asked him to. That includes enclosing his garbage receptacle, putting in a fence to block the view of it from Fancher Elementary School and even blocking traffic from the strip mall next to his.
The one thing he said he wouldn’t do was to block the more northerly of his two driveways. At first, city planners said that the Michigan Department of Transportation said they wanted that. He said he talked to MDOT officials, who he said were fine with the two driveways. In addition, he said blocking that driveway would prevent easy access to the Tyler Wilk insurance agency on the corner of Mission and High streets.
Before the city improved the intersection, cars could access the agency either from Mission or High. The improvement shut off the High Street entrance and Baltierrez said that putting in a drive-thru would require him to block the Mission Street entrance. That would require customers to drive through his parking lot.
It would also make it harder for his thrice-a-week delivery trucks to get in. Baltierrez said city officials told him to arrange deliveries for when the restaurant is not open. He said he has no control over when trucks show up.
At the time, he also asked about pharmacy drive-thrus.
“Why can they have it and I can’t have it,” he said.
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