Call Your Mother, a beloved bagel shop with locations across the D.C. area, is the target of zoning complaints from residents of the Georgetown neighborhood. If Call Your Mother does not receive their requested zoning permits, the Georgetown location will be forced to close.
The chain’s Georgetown location opened on July 29, 2020, two blocks from Georgetown University’s main campus, despite the uphill battle co-owners Jeff Zients, Andrew Dana and Daniela Moreira faced to open the new location. In 2020, Dana and Moreira received an area variance relief — which allows the owner “to make some change to the physical structure or lot itself” despite the zoning regulations for the property — from the D.C. Board of Zoning Adjustments to open their bagel shop in Georgetown, in an area that is specifically zoned for residential use. Several Georgetown neighbors sued shortly after the store’s opening, arguing that the Board erred in granting Call Your Mother the area variance relief.
The D.C. Court of Appeals remanded the zoning matter back to the Board and Call Your Mother’s area variance relief was vacated. Currently, Call Your Mother is applying for a new area variance relief and a special exemption that would allow them to sell prepared foods.
The current zoning battles
Even after Call Your Mother opened up shop, neighbors continued to voice their opposition to the bagel shop. Melinda Roth, a Georgetown resident and a visiting associate professor of law at George Washington University, appealed the Board’s ruling on Call Your Mother’s area variance relief. Roth and other neighbors argued that the Board erred in their ruling: Call Your Mother sells prepared goods — bagel sandwiches — and prepared goods are not covered under the by-right uses for corner stores. Therefore, the neighbors argued that the corner store rules did not apply to Call Your Mother’s operations.
The D.C. Court of Appeals ruled in disagreement with many of the neighbors’ arguments, however, the court vacated the Board’s ruling and remanded the issue back to the Board. The court ruled that the Board should address whether Call Your Mother needs a special exception in addition to the area variance relief. The court also remanded the issue over Call Your Mother’s ability to sell prepared goods under the corner store rules to the Board.
In a hearing in early 2024, the Board decided they had erred in granting Call Your Mother an area variance relief without a special exception. Since Call Your Mother sells prepared goods, the Board ruled that they must seek a special exception — which would allow them to sell prepared goods under the corner store rules — and a new area variance relief.
A special exception can only be granted if “the non-residential use is capable of being established and operated without adversely affecting the use and enjoyment of neighboring and nearby properties due to traffic, noise, design, or other objectionable conditions.”
Call Your Mother applied for new zoning reliefs with the Board on April 19, 2024 and the Board held a public hearing on June 12 to address the application.
At the June 12 hearing, ANC 2E Commissioner Paul Maysak read a resolution from a June 3 ANC meeting in which “the ANC conclude[d] that the large crowds critically cannot be contained in the establishment, creating a routine objectionable condition.”
Maysak stated that the ANC “cannot support the special exception at this time.”
Chris Itteilag, the resident of 3425 O St. NW and a real estate agent, testified that rent prices in the 200 foot radius from Call Your Mother have “been off the charts since they’ve opened.”
“The neighborhood has become more and more desirable, and these landlords are getting record rents. They never have any trouble finding tenants,” Itteilag said. “So I’m very surprised to see they’re in opposition to this.”
While several neighbors highlighted the positive impacts of Call Your Mother such as the community the shop brings to the neighborhood, other neighbors testified that the bagel shop negatively impacts the neighborhood and their properties.
Roth, who resides a few doors down from the Call Your Mother, said that “neighbors have had to erect signs on their personal property that say no sitting, no eating, no littering.”
Caroline and Neal Emad, the owners of 3424 O St. NW, the property directly next door to Call Your Mother, said their “main objection to granting a variance or a special exception has always been, first and foremost, one of a safety issue. The threat of a possible fire, whether it’s caused by the appliances to prepare or heat the food, or the electrical wires is very real.”
Sean Flynn, the owner of Coffee Republic, a small coffee shop located at 3500 O St. NW, directly across the street from Call Your Mother, claimed that “they have lost around $1.5 million since the opening of Call Your Mother.”
“We’ve been deeply impacted by the Call Your Mother Deli. Our facilities have been impacted by bathrooms being taken up, vacant tables are completely occupied during busy times of the day, which leads to a loss of revenue,” Flynn said. “It’s been an absolute nightmare.”
“We’ll continue to try and be great neighbors,” Dana said in an interview with the Eagle. “We’ve reached out to the neighbors who have objected to us and they don’t want to have a sit down and talk about solutions, but we’re always happy to do that.”
At the June 12 hearing, the Call Your Mother team introduced photos from security camera footage obtained by Chris Itteilag’s Nest camera that showed Roth dumping her household trash into public trash cans in front of Call Your Mother.
Roth stated that “it was [her] throwing rat carcasses away” in the still images from the video. However, the Board voted on July 24 that the video would not be included in the record since the Call Your Mother team had already introduced the photos of Roth dumping the trash in their rebuttal and Roth acknowledged that it was her in the video.
The Board of Zoning Adjustments meets again
The Board reconvened on Sep. 25 to continue the hearing on Call Your Mother’s application for zoning relief.
Dana explained that Call Your Mother has implemented several suggestions made by the board at the June 12 hearing, including staff handing out flyers that display all of the public seating available in the Georgetown area. Dana also said that he attempted to negotiate a deal with Coffee Republic to rent out some of their seating but they were not able to reach a deal.
The Emads, Roth and Mary-Louise Carovatti, a close neighbor to the subject property, presented several photographs that showed that customers have continued to use stoops, curbs and Coffee Republic’s seating despite Dana’s claims that Call Your Mother has taken further steps to mitigate these concerns.
Roth testified that since the June 12 hearing and Call Your Mother’s submission of evidence that shows Roth dumping trash into public trash cans, she has been the target of “hate mail” and “phone calls to [her] place of employment saying [she] should be fired.”
Iteillag testified that “the ANC has effectively withdrawn its opposition to the special exception.”
“They have gone from opposition to neutral, which we think says everything about the efforts Call Your Mother has put forward this summer,” Iteillag said.
History of Call Your Mother’s Georgetown location’s zoning issues
Zients, Dana, and Moreira signed a lease on the 3428 O St. NW building in 2019. The space previously housed Greenworks, a floral shop.
Shortly after, neighbors began to raise concerns over Call Your Mother’s plans to sell “prepared goods” out of the O Street location, claiming that the goods do not fall under the purview of the building's retail use.
In 2019, the owners applied for a use variance relief, which “is needed when the owner wishes to use the property in a way that is not permitted in that zone district under the Zoning Regulations.” Since Call Your Mother planned to sell prepared goods — bagel sandwiches — from the property, which sits on a block that is not zoned for commercial use, the owners needed this variance to operate.
On Oct. 2, 2019, ANC 2E, which represents the Georgetown neighborhood, passed a resolution that supported Call Your Mother’s use variance application to the Board. The resolution passed 6-2.
On Oct. 22, 2019, Jack Evans, the Ward 2 councilmember at the time, and Rick Murphy, an ANC 2E commissioner, wrote a letter to the Board against Call Your Mother’s use variance application.
Evans and Murphy wrote “Large crowds will mean that sidewalks will be blocked by customers. Large crowds will also mean there will be more trash which will inevitably attract rats. This business requires frequent truck delivery of goods needed to keep the shop supplied. This, along with customers who drive to the location will result in more traffic congestion. All of this would affect the quality of life for these residents.”
They argued that Call Your Mother should open a shop in Georgetown, but not in the residential neighborhood. Instead, they should open in “a commercial area where [Call Your Mother] will not only benefit from their reputation, but from foot traffic.”
Dana explained that the 3428 O St. NW address is less expensive to rent than a building on Wisconsin Avenue.
“We love the building. We love the location,” Dana said, in an interview with The Eagle. “It was more affordable to open a couple blocks off of Wisconsin Avenue as rents are very expensive in Georgetown.”
After several postponed hearings in the fall and winter of 2019, the Board, at a Dec. 4 hearing, encouraged Dana to pursue alternative options for obtaining zoning relief, specifically an area variance relief as opposed to a use variance relief.
In 2016, the D.C. Zoning Commission passed new zoning rules for corner stores in residential areas. The corner store rules allow corner stores to open in residential neighborhoods but only “at the intersection of two generally perpendicular streets” and “not within five hundred feet of more than one other lot with a corner store use.”
In the Georgetown neighborhood, corner stores do not qualify for this exception unless they are at least 750 feet from another commercially zoned property.
Call Your Mother is located within 750 feet of Wisemiller’s Deli, a deli located at 1236 36th St. NW, a commercially zoned property. However, an area variance relief would allow Call Your Mother to operate despite its proximity to another corner store.
On Jan. 15, 2020, the Board unanimously granted Call Your Mother the area variance relief. Six months later, on July 29, Call Your Mother opened doors at the Georgetown location.
The Board did not reach a resolution at the Sept. 25 hearing, however, they have scheduled a decision meeting for Oct. 23.
“We’ve become a part of the fabric of the neighborhood,” Dana said. “The building itself is incredibly iconic and part of the Call Your Mother brand. We want to stay.”
This article was edited by Mackenzie Konjoyan, Tyler Davis and Abby Turner. Copy editing done by Luna Jinks and Sabine Kanter-Huchting.
