Zoning issue forces late night staple Belmont Pizza to close earlier
Restaurant’s new dining room apparently the culprit.
Fans of late night Museum District staple Belmont Pizza may have noticed the restaurant, offering both takeout and delivery, has been closing much earlier lately.
The restaurant, which once served hungry post-partygoers and night owls until 3:00 AM, has been forced to close at 11:00 PM on weeknights and midnight on weekends.
Belmont, which opened in 2010, recently added a dining room onto its space at 602 North Belmont Avenue near the Devil’s Triangle. Apparently, this new addition is the culprit due to zoning issues.
Phil Riggan of Richmond.com got to the bottom of the issue:
The problem began with the addition of the new side dining room a couple of months ago, which they cannot use due to the zoning issue, according to co-owner Sal Nuara. “The city has their rules and we’re just trying to follow them. We need to go back to the city to get the zoning fixed…we just haven’t done it yet,” he said.
Not being able to stay open late has hurt business, Nuara said. Its not just the partiers and late-nighter drinkers who want pizza after midnight, but also serve many restaurant workers who want to eat after their Saturday night shifts.
“The biggest support is from our customers,” he said of the change in hours. “We’ve even heard of people sending letters in support. Not a day goes by that someone doesn’t ask about it.”
Photo: Richmond.com
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Trevor Dickerson
Trevor Dickerson loves all things Richmond and manages RVANews’ West of the Boulevard and West End community sites.
Notice: Comments that are not conducive to an interesting and thoughtful conversation may be removed at the editor’s discretion.
Discovered their pizza during last year’s bicycle pizza crawl as part of the Bicycle Film Festival….I thought Mary Angela’s had the best pizza in town but Belmont has them beat!
If you were trying to follow the rules wouldn’t you have checked with the city in the first place? Also, this would have come up when they submitted a drawing to the city, which means they never got a building permit, which is rule #1. It doesn’t seem like they were following the rules at all. Too many businesses perform work, then ask for forgiveness later, all the while blaming the city because the business refused to take the time to do the research or ask the right questions.
This illustrates the nonsense that exists in every government bureaucracy. Stupid rules that don’t help anybody, can’t be understood, and are in conflict with other rules. The only people who benefit are the politicians and bureaucrats who gain power over their subjects. This is why I am an anarchist.