Phoenix neighborhood fighting proposed Joey Biltmore restaurant

Located in the center of Phoenix, Brentwood Estates is a veritable pseudo-suburbia.

Take a sharp turn off Camelback Road and onto 31st Street, and the sounds of the city fall away. About 100 feet down the street, past a couple of ramshackle buildings, you’re immediately transported to a picture-perfect neighborhood. The homes are tidy, many with bright green manicured lawns. The hedges are crisp and the streets are clear. The houses are a mixture of remodels, new builds and a few original homes that date to the 1950s.

It’s a desirable place to live — and has also become increasingly affluent. Houses in the 41-home neighborhood, which spans from East Mariposa Street to the north to East Elm Street to the south, range from about $700,000 to $1.4 million. But now, many residents worry, a new development might ruin their slice of urban utopia.

That development is not an affordable housing project or an apartment complex, which are the usual suspects when residents of a tony neighborhood get their hackles up. It’s the Joey Biltmore, a fancy new eatery from the Canada-based Joey Restaurant Group.

In October, the restaurant group applied to redevelop a plot on the southwest corner of Camelback Road and 31st Street, where a glass office building currently sits. The development would encompass a 10,300-square-foot area and feature an elevated dining experience with patio and entertainment space.

The plot abuts Brentwood Estates, even sharing a wall with some homes. Some residents, concerned about an influx of traffic and noise, don’t have the appetite for whatever will be on the Joey Biltmore menu.

“Our neighborhood is full of very young people with babies and small children,” said Colleen Resch-Geretti, who has lived in the neighborhood for 25 years. “It’s a completely different dynamic and I’m concerned for these families.”

More than anyone, Resch-Geretti has been responsible for pushing back against the Joey Biltmore development. She’s the self-appointed neighborhood president, a position that allows her to receive notifications from the city and stay on top of developments that affect Brentwood Estates. Since 2003, she’s been a regular at zoning meetings, the kind of engaged citizen who has the ability to throw a wrench into multi-million-dollar development plans.

Resch-Geretti describes herself as a combination of the Little Engine That Could and the Little Red Hen, both characters whose strong work ethic brings results. To hear her tell it, zoning lawyers hate to see her coming.

“I was out at a (rezoning) hearing,” Resch-Geretti said. “I had gone in and I was filling out a speaker card and a zoning attorney came up to me and he said, ‘Colleen, you’re not here for my case tonight, are you?’ And I said, ‘No, you’re off the hook.’”

Her new righteous cause is ensuring that Brentwood Estates has a say over the Joey Biltmore development before a single shovel breaks ground. The restaurant group submitted a rezoning request to Phoenix’s planning and development department last month, but Resch-Geretti said she first heard about it back in March.

The restaurant would replace the 1980s-style office building that is currently home to law firms and a medical business. In its place would go a more modern design, featuring a sleek, open-concept interior with a view of the kitchen. The nearby BOK Financial bank, also part of the lot, would remain operational. 

The Joey Biltmore restaurant, which would be the 36th in the company’s portfolio, would serve modern American food with a large drink menu and options for private events. It would be open seven days a week, typically from 11:00 a.m. to midnight during the week and until 1 a.m. on weekends.

“Every restaurant we open is unique to its community, and we see this corner of Camelback as the perfect place to build something special that will meet and flow with the established character of the neighborhood,” Jonathan Pedlow, who’s responsible for overseeing the Joey Restaurant Group’s real estate portfolio, told Phoenix New Times in an email. “We’ve fallen in love with Phoenix’s dining culture and our hope is that Joey Biltmore becomes a place where locals feel proud to gather and connect.”

Where will the cars go?

That gathering is exactly what concerns many residents of Brentwood Estates. While a few neighbors told New Times that the development is to be expected when living off one of the main arteries of a growing city, many more view the restaurant as an intrusion on their quiet enclave.

Kaitlyn Sabrowsky and her husband moved into the first home on the block in 2023. From the 32-year-old’s backyard, a thick line of trees blocks most of the office building and dampens some of the sound. But a wall is the only separation between them and the potential Joey Biltmore development.

“Saying it’s in the backyard is not an exaggeration,” she said. The proposed restaurant’s entrance would be about 100 feet from her door, and a popular restaurant that close means lots of traffic, noise and the potential for shenanigans from overserved patrons.

“We bought this house two years ago, planning to be in it for a while and have a family,” Sabrowsky said. “We’ve been lucky to build it here, and still continue to build it. And now I feel like that is in jeopardy.”

One sticking point for Brentwood Estates residents is parking. The proposed Joey Biltmore lot is currently zoned as a commercial office district with fewer than 100 parking spaces on-site. Out of these, 11 will be reserved for bank parking other than on weekends and after 5 p.m. weekdays, according to the restaurant’s zoning proposal.

For high-demand areas, such as restaurants and other drinking establishments, city standards require one parking space per 50 square feet (including outdoor dining areas) and one space per 200 square feet of outdoor recreational space. The Joey Biltmore project proposal is for one space per 105 square feet, which would amount to only 98 parking spots.

That doesn’t mean the rezoning request will be denied; applicants can propose changes to city zoning standards, which are considered on a case-by-case basis. The restaurant group has said its design would meet the parking demands comfortably. It has also suggested that nearby commercial partnerships could provide extra parking, with potential options for valet and rideshare drop-off and pick-up. 

But to residents, only 98 parking spaces is a math problem with an obvious result — more cars parking in the neighborhood instead of at the restaurant.

“They’re 56 short of the city’s 146-space requirement,” said Resch-Geretti. “Even if every homeowner parked one car in front of their house, that still would not be enough for the 56 cars they’re short of.”

“Everyone is going to be affected by the parking issue,” added Sabrowsky. “But we are also concerned about drunk driving, people leaving really late at night. I mean, noise is one thing, but we are more worried about people being belligerent.”

Echoes of Donovan’s Steakhouse

To longtime Brentwood Estates residents, the potential encroachment of a high-end restaurant feels familiar.

Sharon Bitsoi has lived in the neighborhood for 30 years, long enough to remember when the area was less developed and she didn’t have to worry about restaurants causing disruptions. “The southwest corner of Camelback and 30th was one big empty lot where they used to sell Christmas trees,” she said. “But now everything has been developed in that area.”

She also remembers when the east side of 31st street was a residential home. In the early 2000s, it was demolished to make way for Donovan’s Steakhouse. If Brentwood Estates successfully steers the Joey Biltmore development to their liking, it will be because they cut their teeth on Donovan’s.

“We went through the same thing with Donovan’s some years ago,” Bitsoi said. “One of the big concerns was people leaving the restaurant and turning into the neighborhood to exit.”

Michael Kirkpatrick, a 41-year resident, remembers those issues well. “We had to put these ‘no parking’ signs up in the neighborhood because there were limousines, patrons, buses, whatever, all parked in here,” he said. Donovan’s bought and razed a house in an adjacent lot to create more parking, but that was just a further intrusion on the neighborhood.

“They tried to get all four homes on Mariposa,” Resch-Geretti said. “They were successful in getting one. I was able to stop them from getting the other three.”

According to residents who were around at the time, the newly developed parking lot didn’t alleviate the overflow. “There were people here until 12:30 a.m. or one o’clock in the morning,” Kirkpatrick said. Tellingly, there haven’t been any issues since Donovan’s went out of business in 2018. “We love our neighborhood,” Kirkpatrick said, “and don’t want to be encroached by all the stuff that (Joey Biltmore) will bring.”

The proposed Joey Biltmore development is much bigger than Donovan’s, and residents worry the disruption will be bigger, too. (Things could get even worse if the Donovan’s lot is ever redeveloped by Hillstone Restaurant Group, which bought it after it closed.)

A lot must happen before any concrete is poured, however. Rezoning the lot is a 12-step process that ends with a decision by the Phoenix City Council. The city requires the restaurant group to conduct two meetings with the neighborhood to address issues residents might have. One such meeting has already occurred. The next one is supposed to occur sometime in January.

In the meantime, Resch-Geretti has thrown herself into the fray. She has met with the zoning attorney for the project, Nick Wood, to get more information about the restaurant’s capacity, happy hours and operation hours, which are not included in the proposal. She’s met with folks from the city. She keeps her neighbors informed.

The effort sometimes wears on her. “I’m sorry to get emotional, but I’m exhausted,” Resch-Geretti said, speaking through tears. She’d recently spent a weekend collecting signatures in opposition to the development. “I’m just tapped out. I’m a marathon runner, and this is taking more from me than a marathon.”  But she loves her neighborhood and is determined to protect it.

“As much as I dread these cases and the time and energy that it takes away from my life — it’s not fun — it’d be easy to say, ‘Forget it,’” Resch-Geretti said. “But I will see this one through and, hopefully, we’re successful in getting it denied.