Le Petit Paris says au revoir

The owners of troubled French nightclub and restaurant Le Petit Paris closed its doors and are in negotiations to sell the business after an April incident led to the club manager being fired and police officers citing the owners for numerous permit violations.

The final nail in the coffin came when the planning commission revoked the club’s permit to allow dancing.

“I thought it was excessive,” co-owner Bill Pham said of the commission’s decision to revoke their license.

Although Le Petit Paris still has its entertainment license intact, Pham decided to close the restaurant for remodeling and is selling the place. He and partner Vu Tran are in talks with a buyer who plans to open a high-end Italian restaurant instead.

Pham and Tran, who is traveling on business, said they tried hard to run and operate a good business, but one bad judgment in April cost them the dancing license.

On April 1, police found multiple parties in progress at the club, including an outside promotion event that is not allowed by the city. There were 450 people in the nightclub instead of a maximum of 250 occupants, and the music could be heard at 200 feet away instead of the mandated 50-foot distance from the club, according to police reports.

The nightclub owners had been given ample warnings, said planning commissioner Steve Ray.

“They had a history of not following rules and violating them,” Ray said.

Le Petit Paris never submitted plans for delineating the dance floor or applied for a certificate of occupancy ? two basic requirements before dancing could be allowed at the nightclub.

The owners said they put their heart and soul in offering the unique cuisine and entertainment, which had a big following, until Pham became a father in 2004.

“A full-time day job and a new baby took up all my time,” Pham said. He had to delegate responsibility of the restaurant to his managers, and was no longer able to oversee the restaurant’s daily operations.

There’s no excuse for the bad behavior and management, Pham said, but that was just one incident in the six-month review period.

Pham thought they were being punished for the isolated incident with the dancing permit cancellation.

Inka Grill, another restaurant that failed to make it as a nightclub on Main Street, suffered as residents living above it in the Plaza Almeria complained about the noise. The Peruvian restaurant closed in 2005.

Back in October, Le Petit Paris had planned to offer ballroom dance lessons such as rumba, cha-cha-cha and tango, reasoning that dancing itself would have no impact on the neighborhood.

Le Petit managed to secure a dancing permit in spite of a history of police calls and neighborhood complaints under its former name, Moulin Rouge, that had caused the City Council to rescind its entertainment license in 2004. Pham and Tran also owned Moulin Rouge.

City staff recently recommended annulling Le Petit’s dancing permit when police and fire department officials noted about 15 violations by its owners, including not posting a certificate of occupancy, room capacity signs and obstruction of sprinkler systems in April.

The long list of violations and reminders prompted the planning commission to cancel Le Petit’s license, according to city planner Ron Santos.

“I don’t know if any one of them was more important than the other,” Santos said.

When Le Petit asked for a one-space reduction in parking to accommodate its 140-square-foot dancing area, city staff agreed and reported that the addition of the dance floor wouldn’t cause any noise-related or parking-related problems.

In its six-month review, Santos said the dancing required more parking for customers than was initially anticipated.

But the issue that riled city staff the most was that the restaurant didn’t take adequate steps to delineate the dancing from the dining area. Pham said they used a glow tape to mark the area, but commissioners had discussed changing the type of tiles in the restaurant to mark the two areas.

After almost four years of trying to make it work, Pham and his partner are hanging up their hats.

“I hope they’ll support the new restaurant owners as this is a hard business to run,” Pham said. More than 60% of restaurant businesses fail within the first year of operation.

Pham said his son and family are always going to come first, so there is not much more he could have done differently”I guess I could have tried to keep a closer eye on the operations,” he added.