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A city tearoom fed up with the red tape

Get rid of the security grate, the Phila. zoning board told the owners. Within months, three windows were broken.

The Kammerer sisters, Courtney (left) and Kristen, at their Remedy Tea Bar. Business is growing, they say, but city regulations frustrate them. (April Saul / Inquirer )
The Kammerer sisters, Courtney (left) and Kristen, at their Remedy Tea Bar. Business is growing, they say, but city regulations frustrate them. (April Saul / Inquirer )Read more

Kristen Kammerer's first thought was:

Not again.

It was another broken window - the third time in six months that either the front window or the door at her Sansom Street tea bar had been shattered.

Kammerer cast blame in two directions: at the unidentified vandals, who once again cost her thousands of dollars in repairs, and at the city's zoning board.

She and her sister Courtney opened the Remedy Tea Bar 21/2 years ago, but not before the zoning board ruled that they had to remove the property's security grate, leaving the store's extensive glass windows and doors exposed.

"They told us they eventually wanted to have businesses take the grates down to make the city look nicer," Kristen Kammerer said. "At the time we didn't think about it. We just wanted to get open."

Now, she says, "There's a major disconnection, because if we had the grate, none of this would have happened."

The disconnect apparently runs deep.

Eleanor Dezzi, who was secretary of the zoning board when Remedy Tea made its request to open, said the board requested that businesses before them not have shuttered security grates because of police and fire department concerns.

"It's so if an alarm goes off, they would be able to see in," Dezzi said.

Dezzi said the board even offered owners a remedy: modify existing grates with screens.

"They never said that to us," Kammerer insisted. "That's something we would have considered."

Kammerer, 27, and her sister, 25, were inspired to open a tea bar during a trip to London while in college. There, the sisters cringed at the coffee shops on every corner in a place historically known for tea.

"No one was paying attention to modern-day tea drinks," Kammerer said. "So we wanted to create a place that was modern and fun, where you could enjoy quality tea, not crappy tea from tea bags."

They opened the shop in October 2005 on the 1600 block of Sansom, between a parking garage and an adult video store - a long-standing business that has a solid security grate.

The sisters serve more than 50 varieties of loose-leaf tea, and offer nouveau drinks such as tea lattes, frozen remedies, and "mar-tea-nis."

They say business is growing, but they are still annoyed by their zoning experience.

"It was very disorganized," Kammerer said of the Department of Licenses and Inspections. "There's no manual or step-by-step process. You're kind of on your own.

"And," she adds, "you need licenses for everything."

As a testament, the sisters have a pile of electrical permits, demolition permits, building permits and plumbing permits.

But they say their biggest obstacle was the zoning board.

To cut the six-month waiting period for a hearing, they paid L&I $700 to expedite the process.

Two months later, the zoning board approved their application with a few provisos, including "no solid grates on front."

But before they removed the grate, they had to pay for a permit for that, too - $650.

Now, even with an alarm system, they feel vulnerable. In the last six months, 15 commercial burglaries have been reported in the area bounded by Broad, 17th, Chestnut and Spruce Streets.

In October, the store's front door was shattered. Two weeks later, it was shattered again, and this time $200 was gone from the store's cash register, which is still bent from the crowbar.

After the third break-in - about 2 a.m. a few weeks ago, the Kammerers sat in the store for hours, waiting for a repairman to board up the front window.

The sisters want to install the correct security grates, but say because of the shop's massive glass structure, they can't afford it now.

"This whole grate thing makes me have resentment for the city," Kammerer said. "It feels hopeless. I worry every night that something is going to happen."

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