Restaurateur Jesse Gomez's plans to serve margaritas and agua fresca cocktails on the patio at his new Yxta Cocina Mexicana eatery in downtown Los Angeles are getting tangled in red tape.
The upscale restaurant has a liquor license and permission for indoor alcohol service, but slinging booze on its outdoor terrace apparently will require more than an application to amend a city permit and the $2,015 that Gomez sent to cover fees.
The check was cashed, but he received a letter a few weeks ago that said the processing status was "suspension," he said.
"We are at a loss because I don't know all the ins and outs and all the rules and regs. I don't know anything about conditional use," Gomez said. "I sell burritos."
To help business owners like Gomez, the Los Angeles Business Team program has geared up to demystify the municipal bureaucracy. It's part of the city's effort, announced by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in April in his State of the City speech, to improve assistance for small business.
The Business Team was busy during the city's recent building boom, primarily helping developers and other businesses large and small involved with building projects. Now that the boom is over, small-business owners with a variety of problems will get more attention, officials say.
"Everybody always says small business is the backbone of the economy, and they are really struggling these days," said Bud Ovrom, a deputy mayor and head of the Mayor's Office of Economic Development. "The mayor made it very, very clear that he was going to take advantage of the slowdown in construction to put more emphasis on helping existing small business."
The city plans to roll out its new office of small business by July 1, offering an ombudsman-type service, Ovrom said. ("Small" is a relative term. Like the federal government, the city defines small businesses as those with 500 or fewer employees.)
The Office of Small, Local and Disadvantaged Business will be headed by Linda Smith, a former executive at FAME Renaissance, an economic-development nonprofit formed after the 1992 L.A. riots. Smith will expand her duties beyond the city's minority-business development center that she has led since October 2007.
Smith said she knows from her former job how hard it can be for small firms to find out about government resources.
"There are programs sprinkled all over the city in various, different departments," Smith said.
