Restaurant owner cites prohibitive expense of accessibility for closing

When I heard South Woods restaurant would be closing on the day of my Mother’s 80^th birthday, I thought of how much time and money she had spent there. When I read one of the reasons cited for the closing was the cost of making the building accessible to people with disabilities, I thought of the fact my mother had made the owner aware of accessibility problems shortly after he bought South Woods.

 

My mother was a frequent patron of South Woods supper club in the 1980’s and 1990’s. When she later found herself using a wheelchair when going out in public, she let Burss know the building was not accessible to wheelchair users. The access standards outlined by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) were in place before Burss bought the restaurant and my mother’s request for accommodations under the ADA should have tipped him off that ADA standards would need to be considered just like any other market or regulatory factor affecting any business.

 

The decision to close a business, while not necessarily easy, is simply a matter of weighing out relevant factors and coming to a conclusion. It was gracious of Carol Deptolla to simply note “…factors including the rising price of beef and seafood and the prohibitive expense of making the lower-level banquet room fully accessible for customers with disabilities.” And leaving it at that. A less descriptive but more accurate portrayal of reasons for closing the business might have included: volatile supply prices and a failure to accurately anticipate renovation costs.

 

There are many options available to someone who wants to have a restaurant business in 2012. Larry Burss has made the business decision to manage banquets in someone else’s facility. After twenty years of owning his own restaurant this may be a welcome change for Burss or it may be another set of circumstances he’s not prepared for. In either case, the American’s with Disabilities Act of 1990 is far too old a standard to point to as one of only three factors to cite as a reason to close a business.

 

When my mother let Larry Burss know his business wasn’t accessible almost twenty years ago, he should have recognized the need to include current access standards into the cost of operating his business. The fact that he didn’t doesn’t make it more significant as an overlooked cost of running a business. A larger question is why a business reporter would identify access costs as a reason to close a business over any number of other market and regulatory factors influencing the decisions facing restaurant operators in 2012.

 

To see Carol Deptolla’s article go to:

http://www.jsonline.com/business/south-woods-of-cudahy-closing-oct-28-p779b67-174851901.html