The owners of the Spring4th Center felt they had common sense on their side when they asked the city’s Board of Zoning Adjustment for a waiver on the number of parking spaces the business is required to have.
Still, the BZA rejected the waiver application by a 5-0 vote during its Jan. 18 meeting, possibly shutting down the events venue popular with gay and lesbian groups.
Several BZA members made a point of saying that while the letter of the law required them to deny the waiver application, they believed Spring4th owners made a compelling argument for a parking exemption.
“This [waiver application] cannot be sustained because the details of the law are too specific and too clear,” BZA member David Dorsey said before the Jan. 18 vote. “But I’m very, very convinced that this consequence was not the intent of the law in a situation of this sort.”
In January 2001, much of Midtown was incorporated into the “Midtown Special Public Interest District,” with stringent zoning dictates related to residential and commercial development. According to the zoning formula, Spring4th was required to have at least 71 parking spaces before the business received a liquor license.
With zero parking spaces at Spring4th, the owners were required to establish a “shared or off-site parking arrangement” with a nearby business that has extra parking, according to the special interest district ordinance. The owners rented 20 parking spaces from a neighboring Arby’s, and hoped the BZA would grant a parking waiver since a 1,500-space public parking lot is located across the street.
“The real thrust of our request is that we’re about 200 feet away from 1,500 parking spaces,” Stacey Day, one of the Spring4th owners, said at the BZA meeting.
Day informed BZA members that the public lot, known as the Tech Square parking deck, has ample parking available, but does not lease spaces to businesses. BZA Chair Libba Grace agreed that it was unfortunate Spring4th couldn’t formally reserve spaces in Tech Square, but said the parking lot does not exempt Spring4th from the requirements of the special interest district ordinance.
“It should be perfectly clear that this is a perfectly reasonable use of this facility,” Dorsey said of Spring4th patrons using the Tech Square parking deck. “Immediately across the street there is superfluous parking.”
The owners of Spring4th — which has hosted gay leather parties and events produced by Atlanta’s queer Femme Mafia — encountered the parking requirements when the venue expanded in summer 2006, with the number of required parking spaces tied to a location’s size. The expansion also attracted the attention of various neighborhood groups, who attempted to close down the venue.
Before going to the official city committee, the Spring4th parking and liquor license applications were required to wind through groups like the Midtown Neighbors’ Association and the area Neighborhood Planning Unit. An MNA committee originally indicated it would not oppose Spring4th’s applications, but MNA members began making allegations about illegal activities taking place at Spring4th, according to owner Rick Day.
The accusations ranged from charges that the expansion included construction work without a permit, to an anonymous e-mail that alleged Spring4th was secretly a sex club. Midtown neighbors also allegedly doctored an advertisement for an event at Spring4th so that it advertised “BYOB — All ages” and “Underage girls welcome,” according to before-and-after images posted on Spring4th’s website.
In April 2007, the MNA board voted to oppose Spring4th’s liquor license application and parking waiver.
According to the minutes from the MNA’s April 26 meeting, a board member allegedly received an e-mail that stated, “If you want to know what goes on in the building with the red door — sex.”
The MNA board rejected the Spring4th applications, “as it is not appropriate for the neighborhood,” according to the meeting minutes.
At the BZA meeting, Midtown neighborhood activist Cliff Altekruse said neighborhood groups objected to the Spring4th parking waiver because the parking garage is located across the street, which creates danger for patrons walking to their cars.
“There are hundreds of potential conflicts walking from the parking lot to the club,” Altekruse said.
After the BZA meeting, Rick Day said the unanimous vote was the result of Spring4th being unfairly targeted by neighborhood activists.
“Clearly there’s enough parking here, but they’re going by the very strict interpretation of the ordinance, which was written by the neighborhood associations to use as a filter to keep businesses they don’t like out,” said Day, who is uncertain whether Spring4th will remain open.
“We’re going to look at our options, but right now we’re just out of money,” Day said.
The BZA vote against Spring4th prevents the venue from applying for its liquor license, which owners said was financially necessary to survive. Instead of closing, Spring4th may be able to downsize its property to reduce its number of required parking spaces, or continue attempting to enter parking agreements with nearby businesses.
A representative of Selig Enterprises, which owns the land on which Spring4th is located, lobbied on behalf of Spring4th at the BZA meeting.
“These folks have been very good tenants of ours,” Jim Saine said.
“If this tenant is unable to work here, any other tenant is going to run into the same problem [with parking],”
Saine said. “We’re going to board up the property.”
The queer Femme Mafia hosts events at Spring4th, including its Masquerade Ball, which takes place this weekend. Femme Mafia founder Rachel Smith attended the BZA meeting to support Spring4th owners.
“I feel like it has a lot to do with the nature of the events that go on at Spring4th,” Smith said. “Spring4th is our only choice for a facility. It is the only place that has the capacity that we need, it is the only place that allows us to have very experimental queer-friendly performances.”
The tolerant environment at Spring4th also made it a welcome venue to various gay leather groups. In the past 18 months, two separate leather events at Spring4th were raided by the Atlanta Police Department, including an October 2007 raid that continues to be investigated by APD because officers left no paper record of why they shut down a black gay leather party.
After the BZA vote, a tearful Stacey Day mourned the possible end of the community center she and her husband attempted to create.
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deetyphoon on 1/25/086:27 PM:
The MNA sucks, plain and simple. The NPU almost always has to vote with the MNA, it all comes down to the MNA. Please, if you live or work in Midtown, pay the $35 and change the MNA.
Stacey Day on 1/26/082:47 PM:
As owners of Spring4th Center, we were hopeful when we realized BZA members actually read our appeal and asked the right common sense questions. And they went on record as disbelieving the bogus "safety" concerns. But despite their assertions about being hampered by the law, they did have the ability to fully waive our parking requirements based on the "character and use" of the building, by determining that 1500 spaces within 200 ft is a unique character of the location. Stacey & Rick Day
