This is a tale of frozen custard and the City of Chicago Municipal Code 10-28-805.
They don’t exactly go together like vanilla and caramel.
At the corner of Belmont Avenue and Paulina Street, Scooter’s Frozen Custard is a neighborhood institution, beloved by parents, dog-owners and community-minded locals for its frozen treat and also, in part, for the chairs.
Until recently, operators Dennis and Mardi Johnson Moore have put out a few resin chairs so people could sit while eating their custard. The little sitting area became a community meeting spot.
It made a corner of a big city feel like a small town, said Suzanne Reznicek, who grew up in an Iowa farm community.
But as Scooter’s grew more popular and the sidewalk more crowded, not everyone loved the idea.
The Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection received a complaint that people outside Scooter’s were blocking the sidewalk. On June 30, an inspector issued an order to remove the six chairs on the sidewalk.
Chairs are permitted to businesses with a permit to operate a sidewalk cafe, governed by the above municipal code. But the previous 32nd Ward alderman had advised them to forgo the cafe permit and simply put out a few chairs, they say.
They would have been happy to pay the $600 annual fee and get one, they say, but they were told the process takes 60 to 90 days. After talking with staffers from now-Ald. Scott Waguespack’s office, the Moores moved the chairs while the aldermanic office talked with the department in hopes of a resolution.
Then, Scooter’s defenders rose up.
A customer created a “Save the Chairs at Scooter’s Frozen Custard” group on Facebook. Another gathered more than 500 signatures on a petition.
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Taste test
On Tuesday morning, the Moores, the city department and representatives of the alderman’s office will meet in a kind of frozen custard summit to try to reach a compromise.
