Por Lauren Ventura | Editor SDUN

Tensions ran high on the evening of Nov. 16 as frustrated North Park residents prepared to take their longstanding complaints regarding the Bluefoot Bar & Lounge, located at 3404 30th St. on the corner of Upas Street, to the North Park Community Planning Committee.

More than 120 area residents attended the meeting to discuss requests by Bluefoot owners Adam Cook and Cuong Nguyen to the Planning Committee to extend hours of operation to 2 a.m. seven days a week, as well as nix the expiration requirement on its Neighborhood Use Permit (NUP). Currently, the bar is only open until 2 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays and until midnight Sunday through Thursday.

Resident Dana Hosseini, who lives on 29th Street and is a block from Bluefoot, led the opposition with a 15-minute presentation on why he and his neighbors are fed up with the bar.

“This bar is in commercial-residential zone, extending the hours of operation would be detrimental to the health and safety of the community. I have people vomiting and urinating in my yard, drunk people stumbling to their cars in front of my house, all on a weekly basis,” Hosseini said to the crowd.

Hosseini explained that Bluefoot has been a beer and wine only establishment since 1984, which is why he and other area residents oppose the NUP extension and feel the granting of its full liquor license, a separate issue altogether, was a mistake made by the city from the get-go.

This is the bone of contention that has been gnawed on since 2008 when area residents first began its full-scale battle with Bluefoot. At that time, Bluefoot was given a two-year NUP with the stipulation that they must improve relations with neighbors, especially in regards to trash, drunken patrons disturbing the peace and noise.

“We have noise control that patrol the neighborhood, litter clean-up crews who pick-up cigarettes and trash in a one block radius morning and evenings, we have a ‘bat phone’ that area residents can call if one of our patrons is disturbing the peace,” Nguyen said during his presentation. “We have not violated the stipulations of our code compliance and have honored the NUP—we’ve never had one violation from our five years in business”

Residents allege that Bluefoot’s NUP is invalid because of the commercial-residential zone that the bar resides in, called a CN-2 Zone. This zone does not allow for the operation of any tavern past 12 a.m., among other things.

These specific zoning laws that Bluefoot now resides under didn’t pass into municipal code until 2001; Cook and Nguyen purchased the bar in 2005. So how do they manage to operate long hours on Friday and Saturday and serve liquor legally if they are breaking municipal code?

Cook explained that even though the previous tenants, Wolf’s and Rebar, only served beer and wine, they did in fact have tavern hours. Bluefoot had to prove that during the last NUP showdown, and they did by providing advertisement clippings from the former tenants showing hours of operation until 2 a.m., he said.

“The previous tenants chose to not serve liquor for a variety of socio-economic reasons,” Cook said during a recent interview. “But, in the end, none of this matters: We have pre-conforming rights.”

The Bluefoot’s liquor license, Cook explained, is a grandfathered right that dates back to 1935.

“That’s how long this building has been operating as a tavern—almost eight decades,” he said.

City planner, Marlon Pangilinan, who also presented during the meeting, confirmed this. Pangilinan explained that the NUP is in place because of these zoning compliance issues and that the Planning Committee is merely there to hear public comments and to make recommendations to city staff regarding the renewal of the NUP.

“That’s ridiculous,” Hosseini said in response to the pre-conforming, grandfathered rights argument. “Just because it was a bar in 1935 doesn’t mean it should be a bar now, that’s why the zoning code is there. If a business in a local neighborhood was a slaughterhouse in 1935, do you think it should be a slaughterhouse today? How far back can you go?”

The compromise that the city made in 2008 was to appease both sides and allow Bluefoot extended hours on Friday and Saturday only, and midnight closing the rest of the week despite the fact that their type 48 liquor license allows for standard tavern hours, which end at 2 a.m., not midnight.

This year’s meeting concluded, after almost three hours of presentations, public comment and deliberation, with the Planning Committee voting to extend Bluefoot’s NUP from two years to five years but denying its request to stay open until 2 a.m. throughout the week.

“We decided to keep the status quo — and that’s compromise,” says Elizabeth Studebaker, a board member on the Planning Committee and executive director of North Park Main Street. “Everyone got a little bit, so no one was 100 percent satisfied, but that was the best decision we could do considering the situation.”

The committee will forward its recommendations to the City of San Diego Development Services Department (DSD), who will finalize the decision by January at the latest, according to Studebaker.

“I’m not sure if I will appeal the decision once it’s confirmed by the city,” Hosseini said during a post-meeting interview. “It’s a lot better now than it was in 2008, but the longer hours would be horrible. I dread weekends. But every time I get woken up, I tell myself it’s urban living—I have to tell myself that.”