New Naples dining venue faces city scrutiny – Gulfshore Business

The multifaceted hospitality venue combining District, The Kitchen, The Mini Bar, Staff Only and The Alley is so unique that the city of Naples had a little difficulty deciding what works and what doesn’t when it comes to its permitting and operation. The local business venture at 1200 Central Ave. was the subject of more than three hours of discussion during the Sept. 4 meeting of City Council.

“There’s a number of instances where things haven’t been done the way they need to be done and the way the code requires them to be done,” said Leslee Dulmer, the city’s deputy director of planning. “We had a number of meetings and discussions with the petitioner’s agent to try to identify a path forward.”

The issue before council was a modification to a life safety plan for outdoor dining. After a convoluted discussion over indoor vs. outdoor dining, restaurants vs. cocktail lounges, interior vs. exterior signage, a portable bar on a life safety plan, and business tax receipts and hours, council unanimously approved the modification with a few conditions regarding hours of operation and other stipulations.

“The confusion is the prior petition had no indoor seating. It was strictly outside,” Naples City Attorney Matthew McConnell told council members. “This is your opportunity to tie all of these individual rooms together.”

The venue in question is in the recently rebranded Central Square, bordered by Central Avenue, 10th Street South, First Avenue South and Goodlette-Frank Road. It’s next to the new Gulfshore Playhouse in the Naples Design District.

The issue arose earlier this year when The Alley with its “eclectic, graffiti-filled, New York alley atmosphere” was added to the mix of three different elements that work together as one restaurant. The Kitchen serves all of the distinct components, which have one point-of-sale system and consolidated financials for revenues and expenses, said Clay Brooker, an attorney with the Naples-based Cheffy Passidomo law firm, who represented the petitioner.

“The application seeks revisions to the already approved outdoor dining concept which is in operation as we speak,” Brooker said, noting that the outdoor dining venue was approved by council two years ago. “Since then, the opportunity arose for the applicant to add indoor restaurant elements to the outdoor space, resulting in a unique, creative restaurant concept that offers three different dining experiences.”

The main issue was that the city wanted the business to amend its outdoor dining approvals, said co-owner Christopher Shucart.

“Because when we originally did our outdoor dining approvals, it said it was an outdoor restaurant only. So, the city took that in its literal sense and said if you do anything different, you have to come back in and amend your outdoor dining approvals, which means we were trying to open The Alley dining room and they said, well, you’re adding an indoor space. The outdoor dining approval says ‘outdoor only,’ so you have to go revise all of your outdoor dining permits to allow for indoor dining—as crazy as that sounds,” Shucart said.

The city also was pushing back on the venture’s naming convention for its distinct parts, labeled District, The Kitchen, The Mini Bar, Staff Only and The Alley.

“We’re now going to have to dig in and figure out what are we going to call ourselves,” Shucart said. “They can’t regulate what I’m doing interior-wise or marketing-wise.”

The partners of the business, which include Shucart, Marty Kenney and Christopher Lee, think District perhaps has the strongest name to banner the business. They are considering adding the word “The” to make it “The District,” Shucart said.

“Then, the whole thing would become The District, which makes a lot of sense,” he said. “It’s easy. It’s the path of least resistance. We like the name anyways.”

“So, we’ll be working on that pretty quick because I’m assuming they’re going to make me take down one of the signs, either District or The Kitchen. My feeling at this moment is I take The Kitchen sign down and then leave District up.”

The various parts can still have different entrances, identities and names within, similar to local venues such as The Club Room at Campiello or Rouge within The French.