Planner Frowns On Hot Dog Stand For Castro Valley Blvd

Since last fall Marc Michieli has been trying to open a hot dog stand called Muzo's Grill in the Castro Valley Boulevard shack once occupied by Carry Outee.

Patch has written several stories about his efforts.

This week a county planner recomended disapproval of the project on several grounds, including:

• that its walk-up window is disallowed by special rules for the downtown; 
• that the business is too small for such a valuable location; and
• that bringing the parking lot and structure up to code would be too costly.

That negative recommendation is currently scheduled to come before the Municipal Advisory Council on May 13 -- along with a contrasting show of support from county economic development official Bill Lambert.

Michieli says he has sunk about $10,000 into site improvements and $7,000 into paperwork since last fall. 

Michieli can't understand why the county would want to get in the way of his modest dream of opening a grill that would take advantage of the big new sidewalks along Castro Valley Boulevard designed to encourage foot traffic.

County planner Andrew Young said special guidelines for the Castro Valley Boulevard business district specifically exclude new drive-up and walk-up windows.

He said the question before planners was whether there was a reason to make an exception for Michieli and Muzo's. He concluded no.

But Young did say that county economic development officer Bill Lambert supported Michieli on the grounds that Muzo's would revive business activity on a site that has been vacant for years.

Young said the MAC could overrule him and recommend approval of the project.

Even so, Young said planners think the site needs so many fixes to bring it up to code -- including repaving the parking lot for disabled access -- that would be too expensive to make the upgrades just to run a hot dog stand.

Michieli is hoping a show of support before the MAC will persuade that body to lend its weight to his plan.

"It's just a little business," he said. "I don't see why it has to be so hard."

The MAC's recommendation will go to Alameda County Planning Director Albert Lopez.

He makes the final administrative ruling that is subject to an appeal before the Alameda County Board of Supervisors.

Should Michieli get an exception to the rules against take-out windows? What about the additional requirements such as fixing up the parking lot? Or should he call it quits or look for a storefront elsewhere?