In a small conference room off the back aisle of Room 220, at Cleveland City Hall, City Council, owner of Gillota Fuels, Inc., John Gillotta, Sr., said it best, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Those in attendance of today's gathering were Councilman Joe Cimperman, Chuck, Rep. and Permit Manager of Gillota Fuels, Inc., John L. Gillota, Sr., John Gillota, Jr., Sam Jawhari, leasee of Fairfield Gas and Auto, TWDC's Executive Director Chirs Garland, SII Development Director/Project Manager Sammy Catania and myself.
To make a short story shorter, it was agreed by Councilman Joe Cimperman that if they built an enclosure around the dumpster, he would appear at the Board of Zoning Appeals and support the requested variance. There will be no other changes to the 70 year old plus gas station/garage on Fairfield. Sammy only lost his cool and yelled at me once today. All red faced he screamed for me to stay out of this. We all know how that went.
There still seems to be some question as to why this gas station ended up in front of BOZA to begin with since it surely should have been grandfathered in.
I want to thank everyone who stood up for Sam. I do believe that we can consider this a win. As I came home and drove down Professor, I saw Sam out riding a bicycle and he was smiling as he threw up his hand, waved and yelled, "thank you, thank you."
One additional comment, the criminal records posted with the last name Jawhari, were and are no relation to Sam. These were not Sam's family nor was it Sam's records. Councilman Cimperman apologized to Sam in front of all of us that someone did such a distasteful thing.