A Fitler Square cafe attracts foes, becomes ‘talk of the playground’

Zahra Saeed wants to open a little French-style cafe called La Maison Jaune in Fitler Square, bringing a dose of caffeine, a communal gathering place, and a public restroom to this Center City neighborhood.

The storefront at 244 S. 22nd St. bears a recent sign boasting of silver repairs, and a more antiquated advertisement for meats and provisions. It is a few storefronts down from Pizzata, the popular sourdough New-York-style slice and pie place. The business will be open from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., and will not have a kitchen, although Saeed hopes to partner with rotating pastry chefs.

But due to a quirk of municipal law, Saeed must get permission to move forward from the Zoning Board of Adjustment (ZBA). That provides a venue for oppositional neighborhood residents to vent their frustration, and try to stop her from opening.

“I honestly didn’t think anything of it, because it’ll be super cute and a nice place for people to hang out,” said Saeed, who owns the building. “I thought everybody would be excited about it.”

Although Saeed’s property is zoned for neighborhood commercial use — and indeed has hosted small businesses for decades — a food-related business that has seating or takeout needs a “special exception” from the ZBA. Although small-business groups and city planners have sought to change this provision of the zoning code, City Council has not supported reform.

Saeed’s case is slated for consideration Sept. 25, but first she had to present to a meeting of the Center City Residents Association (CCRA), which handles zoning matters for Fitler Square.

During that neighborhood meeting earlier this month, most members of the public who attended denounced her business idea. Opponents argued that small businesses degraded the quality of life in Fitler Square. They feared a cafe would attract rodents, that customers would throw coffee cups on the sidewalk, and that delivery trucks would clog bustling 22nd Street.

“The amount of trucks, its noise, its traffic, its danger, because people want to zip around the trucks,” said Marina Brownlee, a community resident, noting congestion around other neighborhood coffee shops. “I think it would really be a terrible blow to our very special neighborhood.”

Although most neighborhood residents who attended the meeting spoke against the cafe, CCRA’s zoning committee did not oppose the project. While the Fitler Square Neighborhood Association does not consider zoning matters, its president, Ben Keys, said that neighborhood residents he has heard from are baffled by the opposition.

“It’s certainly the talk of the playground,” said Keys. “It’s part of a broader discussion about all these barriers in place that make it so difficult to start a small business in Philadelphia.”

The Sept. 25 zoning board result will be determined, in part, by the degree of community opposition in evidence at the meeting.

While neighborhood sentiment alone doesn’t always determine ZBA action, it can influence an institution that has long been plagued by concerns about opaque and uneven decision making.

Saeed’s zoning lawyer, Vern Anastasio, said he is confident he can make her case. But he acknowledges that having to go before the board at all means there is risk.

Researchers at Boston University have found that attendees at neighborhood meetings, and hyper-local boards like the ZBA, tend to oppose the projects in question. People who don’t mind change are less likely to show up.

“I anticipate the board will approve the special exception, because we will make the case that this little coffee shop is not going to adversely impact neighbors,” said Anastasio. But “I’ve lost special exception cases because of the overwhelming number of people who testify of how horrible a proposed use is going to be. It does happen.”

Before Saeed decided to open a cafe, she sought a tenant for the ground-floor commercial space. But most of the applicants wanted to open the kind of smoke-and-vape related shops that have become the scourge of neighborhood groups across the city.

Saeed did not want to bring what she considered a nuisance business to the neighborhood, and decided to start the cafe instead. But, ironically, if she had rented to a smoke shop it would not have needed permission from the zoning board.

“We were getting a really heavy influx of people that were inquiring about smoke shops, but this is a family neighborhood,” said Saeed. “I thought I was coming from a good place.”