A popular chain sandwich shop aiming to open its first Cleveland Park location has run into a legal roadblock raised by the District government and backed by the community.
Cosi, which operates 13 stores in D.C., wants to sell its brand of sandwich out of the former Blockbuster Video at 3519 Connecticut Ave., a storefront in a busy strip shopping center. But D.C. Zoning Administrator Bill Crews ruled earlier this year that Cosi’s plan to proliferate requires a special exemption because of its location in a “neighborhood commercial overlay district.”
The decision has inspired neighborhood leaders to unite — not necessarily to oppose Cosi, but to protect the sanctity of a long-standing, often flouted zoning regulation.
“The zoning administrator is finally going to enforce the overlay after many, many years,” Cleveland Park Citizens Association President George Idelson said. “We are certainly going to support him for doing that.”
The overlay district, one of several in D.C., requires that bars and restaurants occupy no more than 25 percent of storefronts on Connecticut Avenue between Macomb and Porter streets. The district was established two decades ago to “preserve and enhance neighborhood shopping areas, by providing the scale of development and range of uses that are appropriate for neighborhood shopping and services.”
A lack of enforcement allowed Cleveland Park to exceed its restaurant cap years ago. Crews only recently started cracking down.
Cosi appealed Crews’ decision to the Board of Zoning Adjustment, arguing the shopping center parking lot that separates the proposed restaurant from Connecticut Avenue nullifies the overlay rules. The establishment would not “occupy any linear street frontage,” attorney Andrew Kline wrote in the appeal, and therefore “the denial of a certificate of occupancy was improper.”
The Cleveland Park Advisory Neighborhood Commission is expected to hire a lawyer to support the zoning administrator. The hearing before the BZA is scheduled for Sept. 18.
“The law is the law, and the overlay district is in place,” Cleveland Park ANC Commissioner Avram Fechter said.
Neighborhood leaders say their opposition is not tied to any bias against Cosi, though Idelson acknowledged he’d like “more individualistic kinds of restaurants and stores over there.”
“It’s about the overlay,” he said. “We don’t play God.”
