Carmello’s Restaurant ended its fight with the city today.
Owner Alice Pires says she began the process of removing the wrought-iron fixtures on the windows of her Downtown Manassas eatery that caused such a stir with the city’s Architectural Review Board (ARB) last summer, and later in the year with the city council.
Pires posted to Facebook | I decided not to continue this fight with the ARB and Manassas City council. I started to remove all the nice improvements that I did over the summer as an example take a look at the pictures below side by side windows with shaders and now with out.
My heart is broken they managed to shadow all my dreams and aspirations that I had for this beautiful old town Manassas.
I hope that the citizens of Manassas pay attention to who they vote for in the next elections because this council is going to destroy everything that we worked so hard to accomplish.
Thank you everyone who supported me in this ordeal and throughout all my years of business I couldn’t of done it with out you.
Pires has until the end of December 2019 to change the color of a brick wall she had painted white, as well as black shutters, and wrought-iron chair railing — all of which go against the city’s strict design standards for the downtown area — or face fines imposed by the city.
That was the order given to Pires by the city council in late November, in a party-line vote, with Democrats demanding she removes the paint and fixtures. Those who wanted the fixures removed said they didn’t fit with the red-brick character of downtown, backing up an order from the ARB the fixtures come down and the wall repainted.
The only two Republicans on the council, Theresa Coates Ellis and Ian Lovejoy, supported a failed compromise that would have allowed Pires to keep the wall color if she agreed to remove the wrought-iron fixtures.
Carmello’s restaurant, with a menu influenced by Portuguese and Italian tastes, opened in 1987 and Monza, its next-door casual-dining sister also owned by Pires, opened in 2011.
