Parking Too Costly for His Taste : Policy: Fish taco chain must pay $72,000 before it can open in Huntington. Co-owner says city position smacks of extortion.

How long does it take to make a taco in Huntington Beach? About a year if you are Ed Lee, co-owner of the expanding Wahoo’s Fish Taco chain.

Lee, who began the application process last May to open a store on Huntington Beach’s Main Street, said he has yet to sell a single order of the popular fast food, despite Huntington Beach’s claim to would-be business owners that it is “The City of the Red Carpet Treatment.”

“What a joke,” Lee said Wednesday. “They sold me on the idea it was going to be easy. Now I am stuck.”

At issue is a new section in the city’s 12-year-old code--designed to steer redevelopment of the Main Street retail district--that requires restaurants along the strip to pay thousands of dollars a year for parking spaces that they are required to make available to customers.

For Wahoo’s, which is allotted 12 spaces in the city’s Main Street parking garage, that means coughing up $72,000 for 15 years of parking fees and depositing the funds in an escrow account--or allowing the city to put a lien on the storefront property until the money is paid.

Lee said he can’t open for business until he chooses one of the options, though he is ready to start selling his tacos to surfers and fast-food-minded tourists right away.

But Lee says neither of the possibilities suits him. Besides, he said, he is tapped out financially and doesn’t have the $72,000. In addition, a partner is hinting that she will demand her $600,000 investment back if Huntington Beach officials insist on a lien, because that would give the city first rights to seize the property if the business fails.

City officials acknowledged that they are withholding the business permit until the parking space fee is paid up front or they get a lien on the property. (Lee bought the store outright, rather than lease it.)

But city spokesman Keith Bohr said that Huntington Beach has been trying to accommodate Lee--who is the first restaurateur faced with the new requirement--by providing him with the alternatives.

“We can stretch the code, but we can’t break it,” Bohr said.

He said city officials now acknowledge that the code could be more lenient toward new businesses, which are needed to revitalize Main Street. That process, however, could take another year, Bohr said. In the meantime, Lee “is caught in the middle of the change.”

Still, Bohr said, Lee is being intransigent by refusing to accept agreements that seem to be acceptable to other businesses.

For instance, Bohr said, the city was meeting Wednesday with executives of BJ’s Chicago Pizzeria to sign a lien agreement that would guarantee the city its $106,000 for 18 spaces allotted to the pizza store.

The money collected from restaurateurs on the newly renovated strip is targeted for construction of a new parking garage. But Bohr said there are no immediate plans to build a second garage because the one in use is still “woefully underutilized.”

For Lee, that is the rub. He wondered aloud what short-term benefit he will receive for the $72,000 payment as long as no new garage is planned.

Bohr was quick to point out Lee’s direct benefit: “What he will get for his money is that he will be allowed to open the restaurant. He will meet code requirements.”

Lee said that answer smacks of extortion. He said he has not experienced such difficulty in opening a fish taco store before. Wahoo’s already has two restaurants in Costa Mesa and one in Laguna Beach.

A fourth eatery is scheduled to open this month in Lake Forest. The application process in that South County city, Lee said, took him only two months.

In Huntington Beach, he said, he began the application process before the city started assessing the parking space fee. He is willing to pay the money anyhow, he said, but insists on doing so in yearly increments of $4,800 for the next 15 years, without signing over rights of the property to the city. A lien, he said, could prove onerous if he wanted to sell the Wahoo’s chain or if lack of traffic closed the business.

He has already paid the first year’s installment and has personally lobbied City Council members, including Mayor Linda Moulton-Patterson, to allow him to make annual payments without putting up the entire amount.

Late Wednesday, Councilman Jim Silva met with Lee at the shuttered store and vowed to spearhead efforts to change the code quickly.

Silva said that he arranged to have a meeting with City Atty. Gail C. Hutton as early as today to hash out the legal issues and try to get the restaurant open by Memorial Day.

“We have to try and work with businesses, not chase them away,” Silva said. “We are in a recession, and money is very tight for everybody. The city has to do everything it can to facilitate business.”

Lee said that, if nothing comes of those meetings, he may be willing to break the law and open for business anyhow.

If he does that, city officials said, he faces an immediate shutdown.