Coltivare’s Patio Wrap Draws Attention from the City

Coltivare, 3320 White Oak Dr., Houston Heights

Red Tag at Coltivare, 3320 White Oak Dr., Houston HeightsHeights pizza-and-veggie spot Coltivare now sports a bright red tag (shown at right) next to its front door — after a city inspector found fault with its newly protected-from-weather patio space facing the side garden (the white tent-like structures in the photo above) last week. What’s wrong with covering a patio with a temporary structure for the winter?

Nothing, but it does trigger some permitting issues. “An uncovered patio isn’t considered an occupied space,” a Swamplot reader familiar with Houston building regulations writes. But: “A lot of folks don’t realize covered patios count as building square footage and must be permitted.”

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Coltivare, 3320 White Oak Dr., Houston Heights

An increase in a restaurant’s square footage will also affect its parking requirements. The note to “stop all unpermitted work” requires the restaurant at 3320 White Oak Dr. to get permits for the addition of the structure and a new certificate of occupancy for the additional area.

Photos: Swamplot inbox

Restaurant Creep

50 Comment

  • The NIMBYs strike back!

  • NIMBY’s are on a witchhunt!

  • I always wondered just how the lunacy of using $500,000 worth of real estate taxes to grow vegetables on would end. This may tell us: the inevitable logic of making more money from seating people at tables than letting them walk among the crops being fertilized with car exhaust. I hope the remedy from the city isn’t “more parking” — Coltivare deserves props for maintaining and enriching the urban line instead of just unimaginatively cramming more cars onto the sidewalk.

  • Well, all that enclosed space certainly helps to explain the resulting parking problems. I wonder if the City will also take a look at the garden in determining parking? The garden consists of few raised boxes surrounded by wide pathways that people stand and sit around waiting for a table so that add to the occupant load and parking issues as well.
    .
    I see the same creep happening at Revival where the groceries have been limited and tables added to the interior and exterior. Both restaurants are wonderful additions to the Heights, but they need more parking!
    .
    There is a reason Houston has these parking requirements. I think the city should adhere to those requirements for all businesses.

  • Dear God, I hope the next mayor cleans house at PWE. Starting with Thomas Hosey and all his inspectors who each have their own agendas.

  • Nimby’s have been bombarding the city officials just like how they got “parking within 20 feet of an intersection” tickets issued to restaurant patrons. Developers need to move west into spring branch which has a great economic base to support these restaurants and businesses getting attacked by nimby’s.

  • Does an umbrella count as an enclosed/covered space? A sun shade? A tarp? A large tree with ample branches?

    There is plenty of parking in the neighborhood. I lived nearby and could always find street parking somewhere close to my house.

  • Houstonian, stop trying to make Spring Branch happen. Enjoy your fabulous Korean food.

  • pfft. Just one red tag? Rookies :)

  • I’ve lived here nine years and the parking requirements still make no sense to me. How hard is it to put up meters and issue free parking permits to residents? Also, create a code for residential re-platting that the builder must preserve a certain percentage of existing street space for parking, with a minimum requirement.

  • Parking within 20ft of an intersection considerably increases the risk of injury to pedestrians and cyclists as well as increasing the risk of vehicle accidents. That’s why it isn’t allowed. If the only space available is too close to an intersection then park further away and walk a few yards for a change!

  • Restaurants do this ALL the time. First add an nice outdoor patio, then some tables, umbrellas, then a low wall, then a roof for the hot sun, then some ceiling fans/heaters/lighting, then some weather protection from the cold, which becomes windows. With all the construction in the Heights, not surprised they got caught. Added seating triggers more parking, and possibly even more restrooms.

    Cyclone’s on Durham got caught and had to reduce number of tables outside. For an example on how to do this more effectively, recall the old Carrabba’s on Kirby, or Niko Niko’s on Montrose. I’m pretty sure Niko’s is even over the property line in the city R.O.W.

    Maybe times are a changin’.

  • Translation: if you want an awning, you need more parking spaces. God forbid people park on the street and walk a block or two.
    This is why we can’t have nice things, Houston.

  • Obtain permits, THEN build.

  • Not sure why everyone is screaming NIMBY on this thread (although some commenters here do have NIMBY Tourette’s). @Houstonian, when parking is allowed within 20 feet of an intersection, it means no one can get around left-turning cars. It’s a huge problem on streets like Dunlavy, where traffic backs up for 2-3 light cycles all because someone is parked too close to the intersection with Westheimer.

  • If it bothers you that a restaurant got dinged for a code violation, lobby your City Councilman to change the code! Don’t whine about NIMBYs, or wish for inspectors to be fired because they did their jobs!

  • @Houstonian. With all due respect, parking within 20 feet of an intersection is a pretty standard rule (isn’t it in the driver’s handbook?) and, in congested areas, it really does obscure visibility when make turning onto a street –especially if it is an SUV or truck. Living in an area with a lot of weekend club traffic, I hardly see it as a punitive measure to make restaurant patrons life a living hell.

  • I can’t wait until the term “NIMBY” is gone and buried forever! If I hear one more bit of whining about “NIMBYs” from people who by the nature of their whining are worse than the NIMBY’s themselves, I think I will act out in socially unacceptable ways! Everyone one of you whiners will at one point become a NIMBY if you ever decide to own a piece of property in a diverse neighborhood…..and none of that BS about “they bought there, they deserve it”. How do you know what their circumstances are? Just one more way to degrade your fellow citizens and to somehow set yourself….and your obvious enlightenment….apart. And no, I don’t live in this area.

  • Does this mean when I sell my house, I can put some canopies up in the backyard and increase the reported square footage on HAR? Ridiculous.

  • Parking within 20 feet of an intersection has never been enforced anywhere in the entire city of houston (if it is actually a law)except in the heights during a major event. It’s sad that these people are so bitter. And, yes, spring branch is growing big time right now. It’s easily adjacent to the galleria, memorial city and city centre and tons of jobs. I don’t get why developers keep fighting the same war with people who don’t want businesses around them. I have a few favorite restaurants in the heights but it’s kind of turning into a parody.

  • “NIMBY: Obtain permits, THEN build.”
    .
    Totally. How dare a business put up a shade canopy without asking permission first from our government rulers and making sure to pay their pound of flesh. ALL HAIL THE CITY GOVERNMENT!!!
    .
    Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to pee… But before I do, I’ll make sure to get permission from the city. I need to pay my $ so they can inspect my toilet to make sure it can handle my stream.

  • From the State of Texas Driver’s handbook page 45

    Do Not Park or Stand a Vehicle
    Whether occupied or not, do not park or allow a vehicle to stand idling:
    1. In front of a public or private driveway
    2. Within 15 feet of a fire hydrant
    3. Within 20 feet of a crosswalk at an intersection
    4. Within 30 feet upon the approach to any flashing signal, stop sign, yield sign, or other traffic control
    signal located at the side of a road
    5. Within 20 feet of the driveway entrance to any fire station and on the side of a street opposite the
    entrance to any fire station within 75 feet of entrance
    6. At any place where an official sign prohibits parking or standing

    If it isn’t enforced, then maybe Annise needs to mobilize those citation writers for a new stream of revenue.

  • Maybe this isn’t widely understood but large temporary tents do require a permit and a fire inspection, as anyone who’s ever had to help with a tented gala knows.

  • so if you just have tables where people can sit/eat, it isn’t square footage, but you install temporary shade, then it needs a permit? This is silly, and seems like a stretch to be considered a “covered” patio. If you are on Nextdoor and see the posts about parking, you would understand why people are calling out the NIMBYs.

  • Will the NIMBY’s can move to Spring Branch for all I care; the 20′ rule has been alive and well enforced in areas where transient street parking is rampant (e.g., at UST and I should know having been ticketed).
    .
    But lets consider other and positive reasons for permitting besides parking: Fire codes (occupancy and egress), health and safety codes, structural codes, sanitary… etc. Personally I think there’s a lot more at stake than just parking. Like with trees on the RoW: get the stupid permit.
    .
    Of course… some NIMBY was having a water heater installed and the city inspector just happened to drive-by and see the canopy– or was advised by the savvy resident all too disdainful of their parking situation? Who knows. Sounds like a roof is all it takes to generate taxes.

  • I’m officially psychic. Too bad I wasted it on knowing Coltivare would attempt to seat diners in the garden.

  • How can a person be called a NIMBY when the offensive thing is actually located in their backyard? Perhaps “IIMBY” (“It’s In My Backyard”) is a more appropriate slur to use when describing the neighbors affected by bait and switch permitting? As for the anti-IIMBY contingent, I am going with “HHINIMNBIHAOAIA” or “Ha Ha It’s Not In My Neighborhood But I Have an Opinion About it Anyway.”

  • Nimby is as Nimby does. It’s a complaint driven process, and if you don’t think the neighbors called in this code complaint, you may also still be waiting on that last visit from the tooth fairy from 30 years ago.

    Offended NIMBYs in this thread: Don’t obfuscate or retreat. Own it. You like restaurants, you just don’t want one near your house. You like that the power turns on when you flip the switch and the poop magically disappears when you flush, but you don’t want a power line or a sewer treatment facility anywhere near you. Those things all are more compatible land uses for Somewhere Else, which is a magical, floating, non-corporeal location in the 4th dimension.

  • Adding more seating means more parking is needed. Glad to see the city doing something about it.

  • @JT, Thanks for finding that for me. There was no crosswalk and none of the others applied. So, yeah, they are writing bogus tickets just to keep nearby residents happy.

  • The Building Code (Houston and everywhere else) includes covered exterior areas as part of the building square footage. (You really aren’t safe and out of a building until there is sky above.)
    This impacts the allowable building area, occupant load and egress requirements in addition to things like parking and plumbing fixture count. Although not likely in this case, addition of a covered patio to an existing building could require installation of fire sprinklers through-out the whole building.

  • The real question is for you, Semper Fudge: do YOU want noisy bar patrons parking in front of your house late at night? Do YOU want a power plant or a sewage treatment plant in your back yard? If your answer is “no, I don’t want one,” or “I live in a gated neighborhood in the suburbs, so no worries,” then you’re a hypocrite. Plain and simple.
    .
    Granted, NIMBY concerns over a nice restaurant or an upscale bar are a little extreme. I wish people would get their priorities straight and save their energy to protest the really egregious things: transfer stations next to residential neighborhoods; concrete crushing plants next to parks. But either way, I am more likely to stand by a neighborhood than some bar owner who whines because his patrons aren’t welcome to break the law.

  • So, they just take down the tents and crank up the portable heaters? Is the City code so obtuse that you can have a tiny restaurant with a huge uncovered patio and duck the parking minimums, but if you put up a tent, you have to count the patio space? Put another way, why don’t they just count anywhere the restaurant intends to serve patrons as square footage for parking minimums? Is this that Bar-b-cue picnic table loophole?

  • Annise Parker’s legacy of tagging every minor infraction. Another fricking scheme to extort $$$ from property owners!!! A bunch of bs… I wonder how violations she & Kathy have on Westmoreland…

  • Annise’s Prius Patrol are on a rampage. All over the Inner City,especially Montrose,Heights,Etc. We’ve entered a surreal /Twilght Zone vortex… @ SemperFudge,exactly.

  • I hope that no one on this thread that lives nearby, ever eats at the restaurant unless they drive and park there. If you do, you are hypocrite. Plain and simple. You want walkable cities and neighborhoods with more than three restaurant and bar choices? Can’t have it with a parking ordinance. The fact that the same parking ordinances apply at Highway 6 and I-10 that apply in the Heights is just dumb.
    .
    Look at Austin (the most super cool city in the universe)? New Orleans? Chicago? New York? San Francisco? LA? San Diego? Boston? They’re all places to that people love to go and visit because “there is so much to do and see” there……we actually have a lot to do and see here, you just have to get in your car and drive 20 minutes every time you want a change of scenery, because the parking ordinances don’t encourage entertainment districts or liveable walkable neighborhoods.
    .
    Bottom line is that Houston’s parking ordinances, in my opinion, have held the city back for years, and will continue to do so until they are amended.

  • 9 city inspectors and counting on a single project.

    Do what the 1st inspector tells you, until….
    The 2nd inspector tells you the opposite, then do that, until….
    The 3rd inspector tells you to do something else, so do that, until…
    A new 4th inspector shows up and rejects all that, etc

    City permitting is the same trainwreck all other city of Houston departments are.

  • Good point, Old School. The parking requirements for restaurants should go by seats; not square footage. Whether the seats are indoors or outdoors, shouldn’t matter from a parking standpoint.
    .
    If businesses want to lessen their on-site parking requirements (once you get inside the Loop, they ALL do), my vote is that we should let them pool parking. Organizations could be set up that are similar to a MUDs but that build and maintain central parking garages instead of utilities. Businesses in the GD (Garage District) have their parking requirements taken care of by the central parking garage – they just need to confirm that there’s capacity through a letter of availability. This would allow for the car-less density that we’re after Inside the Loop; it would make it a lot easier to develop there, but it would also prevent parking from being a problem.

  • The desperate pleas of residents in the Heights area for more restaurants while decrying parking enforcement (lack of and/or too much) like those living near Coltivare, et al is due to the lack of ranges and ovens in their own homes.

  • SFP: The parking requirements are in need of a major rewrite, true. But We need to make sure ample parking is available near businesses. To do otherwise is classist. Increasingly poor and middle class people live on the outskirts of cities while the rich live in walkable neighborhoods near the center. Without ample parking, you’re essentially saying to the poor and middle class, “you’re not welcome here.” That’s not a good thing, socially or for business.
    .
    That said, the suburban style surface parking lot/ setbacks has got to go. European cities do just fine with central parking garages downtown; and in fact we followed that model already around City Hall and the Theater District. There’s no reason we couldn’t do that in other locations. It just takes some re-working of our laws and regulations (both at the City and possibly State level).

  • I find this comment fascinating. “I hope that no one on this thread that lives nearby, ever eats at the restaurant unless they drive and park there. If you do, you are hypocrite. Plain and simple.” Hypocritical?

    http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/you-keep-using-that-word-i-do-not-think-it-means-what-you-think-it-means

  • Just to be clear because some people are tossing the words around sort of interchangeably. A tent is not the same as a canopy. The picture in the article shows clear walls below the roof structure. Having those walls can change your egress requirements a lot. Especially if those walls don’t necessarily have the fire protection or fire retardant capability that real walls do.

  • Padraig, you need some major therapy around you Annise issues! Really, what exactly is your problem? Did she do something to you personally, or does it have something to do with her “orientation”? These issues go way beyond one administration or politician. Don’t simplify a complicated issue to support your own personal issues.

  • “We need to make sure ample parking is available near businesses. To do otherwise is classist. Increasingly poor and middle class people live on the outskirts of cities while the rich live in walkable neighborhoods near the center. Without ample parking, you’re essentially saying to the poor and middle class, “you’re not welcome here.” That’s not a good thing, socially or for business”

    This is a ridiculous comment in the context of this thread. Have you actually been to Coltivare? I’ve never left with a bill less than $75 for two people. Moreover, it’s not like there is *NO* parking nearby, you just halve to walk a bit. I am certain when I walk to any of the businesses on White Oak from Woodland Heights (which I do multiple times a week), my 1.5 mile walk is longer than ANYONE driving into the neighborhood to patron those same businesses.

  • While it does sound ridiculous that you need a permit to put a temporary cover over the outside diners’ heads, this law developed (as most do) because of those bad apples that took advantage. Like someone else posted – first it’s the cover, then some sides, then some windows in the ‘sides’, and so on until it really is part of the building anyway.

    As for the laws about parking on the street, and questions about their enforcement – Yes it is the law (see below) and it is enforced. Happened to me in mid-town, and happens in my neighborhood in Museum Park.

    Do Not Park or Stand a Vehicle
    Whether occupied or not, do not park or allow a vehicle to stand idling:
    1. In front of a public or private driveway
    2. Within 15 feet of a fire hydrant
    3. Within 20 feet of a crosswalk at an intersection
    4. Within 30 feet upon the approach to any flashing signal, stop sign, yield sign, or other traffic control
    signal located at the side of a road
    5. Within 20 feet of the driveway entrance to any fire station and on the side of a street opposite the
    entrance to any fire station within 75 feet of entrance
    6. At any place where an official sign prohibits parking or standing

  • @ZAW: I have come to the understanding that the only thing that unites all people in this country – Republican and Democrat, whatever ethnicity or income level – besides being carbon based – is the NIMBY principle. Like I said above, own it. Be what you are.

    I am too. No, I don’t want a sewer plant in my back yard. Thus, I moved to a place where I know all of the allowable land uses within a reasonable proximity. You asked whether I care if bar patrons park in front of my house. No, I do not, perhaps because I’m one of the small percentage of people who understand that I don’t own the curb in front of my house, and that it is a common resource usable by all taxpayers. I chose to live in an urban area, which means people park on streets. C’est la vie.

  • WH, there’s that classism I’m talking about. Middle class people can’t afford to pay $500,000 for a house in The Heights, but we will on occasion eat at a nice, $75 a person, restaurant. We did just that, my wife and I, for my birthday (it wasn’t Coltivaire’s, but still, it was $75 a head).
    .
    Don’t misunderstand me. Nothing is more antithetical to any sense of urban place, than a sea of parking. And the suburban big box (islands in seas of parking) and strip center (coves of parking off six lane roads) are obviously something people in The Heights and other older neighborhoods don’t want. It’s not what I am advocating. I’m suggestion parking garages, underground or above ground; designed to fit in with their neighborhoods – that can take the place of those seas of parking. Garages where some suburbanite like me can leave his car for the day while he walks around, shops, dines, takes the bus, etc etc. in a nice urban environment.

  • @ZAW, the concept of pooled parking is appealing at first but as a lawyer who’s practiced in commercial real estate for 20 years its ultimately unworkable. Negotiating license agreement for even two users of a parking garage is difficult and I can’t imagine four or five users jockeying for the same spaces.

    Your comment about MUD-type entities building them is a good one. I haven’t looked it up, but a Management District may be able to do this under existing law.

  • Looks like there is a second red tag now near their door. I wonder what happened and how it is being resolved?

  • It’s back. Patio wrap for the winter.