Manassas leaders order color of restaurant’s brick wall be changed in party-line vote

City leaders on Monday phoned in their order to the owners of the Carmello’s and Monza restaurants.

• A white-brick wall on the rear of the building that houses both restaurants at 9405 Battle Street must come down be repainted because it doesn’t conform with the other buildings in the city’s downtown.

The award-winning fine-dining restaurants are both owned by restauranteur Alice Peres, and she now has 30 days to remove the brick wall, black shutters, and chair railing on the wall, or face possible fines imposed by the city.

• According to city documents, brown or red brick was to be applied to the wall on the backside of the restaurant when it was completed, as well as lanterns installed to give it a similar look and feel of other turn-of-the-century buildings in downtown.
• Instead of red brick, city leaders say Monza and Carmello’s, which both serve Italian food, chose white brick to apply to the wall and installed wrought iron shutters and chair railing.
• “[The wall] can’t be Mediterranean… it needs to look like the turn of the century…early 1900s,” said Manassas Councilwoman Pam Sebesky, at a November 25 City Council meeting.

The city’s Architectural Review Board has already denied the businesses a certificate of appropriateness to keep the wall and issued a stop-work permit for the wall in July.

• City Councilman Mark Wolfe made the motion for the Council to back the ARB’s denial, calling it a “difficult one.”
• “This is not about pretty. This [wall] is pretty. It’s not about Monza, or the owners of Monza. They’re all friends of mine… this is about the process,” said Wolfe.
• “The community has rules and the rules must be followed to keep people safe and to maintain the vision of the community,” Councilwoman Sebesky added.
• Wolfe’s motion was seconded by Councilwoman Michelle Davis-Younger, and the council voted 4-2 6-2 to approve. It was a party-line vote with Councilwoman Theresa Coates Ellis and Councilman Ian Lovejoy, both Republicans, dissenting.
• The mayor did not vote, as he votes only to break a tie vote.

Peres may appeal to the Prince Willaim County Circuit Court, and if a judge decides to hear her case, it will pause the 30-day action timeline imposed by the city.

• A spokeswoman for the restaurant told Potomac Local that Peres is now weighing her options.

Councilman Lovejoy argued that the council was not there to decide whether or not Monza correctly followed the ARB’s process (the wall, before the new brick was applied, had been approved by the ARB in 2016) but rather the council had to decide to overturn or uphold the ARB’s decision not issue a certificate of appropriateness, which it has the power to do.

• Coates Ellis proposed a compromise that would have allowed Monza to keep the wall if it agreed to remove the wrought-iron fixtures.
• “Monza is an incredible asset to our city, to old town, and this wasn’t malicious. I hope we, as a council, will not penalize a business like Monza,” said Coates Ellis.
• The compromise, however, failed on another 4-2 6-2 party-line vote, with Lovejoy the only other supporter of the substitute motion calling for the compromise.

Carmello’s opened in 1987 and Monza, it’s casual-dining sister, opened in 2011.

*This post has been corrected.