After a few quiet months of temporary reprieve, the East Broad Street dirt and gravel lot used by the Jittery Joe’s roaster and tasting room for customer parking again faces government scrutiny. On Feb. 4 the Athens-Clarke County Planning Commission will review staff reports on a site plan submitted by lot owner Don Bennett and Jittery Joe’s owner Bob Googe. But the plan raises serious problems for county planners, so the owners’ heads are still “on the chopping block,” Googe says.

Last fall, planning officials told Bennett to close the lot to daily parking use because it didn’t meet the community standards for parking lots adopted in the county’s 2008 comprehensive land use plan. Originally, Bennett let Jittery Joe’s staff and customers park in the lot on weekdays in exchange for restroom and water access for RVs on football gamedays. The roaster and the tasting room have only three allotted parking spaces.

The planning department’s October action raised the ire of customers, the local media and even several ACC Commission members, who asked the planning department to grant a temporary use permit to Bennett until the matter could be resolved officially. Bennett and Googe submitted a site plan for review, but in November asked to table the issue while they considered all of their options.

Under review Thursday night is an unchanged version of last fall’s submission, and planning staff is recommending denial of the special use request for a few reasons. Senior planner Rick Cowick says the design doesn’t meet some basic technical requirements for a downtown lot: it’s not paved, for starters, and there are storm water issues that could affect the adjacent lot, which will be used for part of the county’s future rails to trails project. Then there’s an issue of control that bothers staffers: Jittery Joe’s doesn’t own the lot they’d be using for daily parking. What protects the business beyond the original handshake agreement made by Bennett and Googe? And there’s a philosophical issue: Does the city want to support stand-alone parking or on-street and deck parking?

If Jittery Joe’s were to buy the lot—if the off-street parking were under Jittery Joe’s’ direct control—many of these concerns would cease to be. But the price of the lot is unaffordable, says Googe.

This is “nothing about the city against Jittery Joe’s at all,” says Cowick. Planners try to treat everyone the same, whether corporate or local businesses, and the department must “have more of a reason to break a community standard.” There is potential for the mess to work itself out, Cowick says, but the lot will have to conform to certain requirements.

If the process seems confusing, well, it is. Still unsure about his options, Googe says he may have to lose the tasting room or move the entire facility. But Jittery Joe’s’ parking fate is far from sealed; there’s a long month of hearings and official convincing ahead of the coffee company.

Following Thursday night’s meeting, planning staff will present their recommendations to the mayor and commission at their mid-February agenda setting session and the final decision will come down at the Mar. 2 regular commission meeting. There’s “a lot of diversity of opinion” coming from the commission, with preferences ranging from strict compliance to flexibility, says Commissioner Kelly Girtz. Allowing the permit for a gravel lot doesn’t rule out any preferable future uses or expansion in the same way that plopping down a mini-mart on the site would, Girtz says.

“It seems worth considering,” he says, adding that Jittery Joe’s needs to recognize that someone could buy up the lot, and they’d be out of luck. Even if the permit comes, Girtz says, the business had better start thinking long term.

Thursday’s 7 p.m. meeting in the Planning Department Auditorium, located at 120 W. Dougherty St., is open to the public.

Andre Gallant